I am a true digi citizen! The smart ring measures my sleep quality, our five-year-old child can be located using a smartwatch and the phone app keeps track of our electricity consumption. Various online services have made my life a lot easier. Thanks to them, I avoid queuing and save time. Today, I even handle our family’s grocery shopping online. There is a peak time in my life. I have a small child, I study and work full time. Thanks to digitalisation, I save time on basic tasks and have the opportunity to cope with my daily life.
KELA, OMAKANTA & KEVA
KELA’s online services are familiar to me through work and civilian life. Years ago, when I worked at KELA’s customer service, I often guided customers in the use of online services. In my own civilian life, I used KELA’s online affairs a lot when I was expecting my child and when I was on parental leave. Through electronic transactions, I filled in applications, submitted attachments, checked decisions and payments. After returning to work, transactions with KELA have decreased. At the moment KELA pays child benefit to the family once a month and and I pay a college student health care fee once every six months.
With the birth of our child, I found out about the European Health Insurance Card and ordered the cards for our whole family. We have been using the cards for five years now. Although our child has health insurance and our family has travel insurance, we also secure our travel with a European Health Insurance Card. The good side of the European Health Insurance Card is that it is free and you don’t have to worry about renewing it. Kela sends new cards automatically. We just received new cards in the mail. This summer, after a long break, the cards will travel with us to the Mediterranean.
I also use the Omakanta online service regularly. Through the Omakanta website, I send requests to renew my own and my child’s prescriptions, check the balance of prescriptions, and read my medical reports. With the Omakanta service, healthcare work has become more patient-oriented and transparent. A person has the right to see what health professionals record about him. Omakanta also supports other online health care services. A month ago, I had time for a remote doctor’s appointment. After the appointment, I saved the medical report about Omakanta to my computer and sent it to my employer via email. When I got sick, I appreciated that I didn’t have to leave home. I was able to handle things with the help of information technology.
I dream of retiring healthy, not when I have the right retirement age. My retirement age is 67 years and 5 months. That’s why I checked my employment pension statement regularly and have even started saving for retirement days. Usually, I tend to check my statement on KEVA´s website once a year. Although there is still a long way to go before retiring, I find it interesting to monitor the accumulation of the pension. I have also taught my mother and sisters to use KEVA’s website.
ONLINE SHOPPING
This was my virgin trip to the eBay and Amazon websites. I have never bought anything from those online stores. Hardly even visited. This is really weird because I buy a lot of things online. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve even outsourced our family’s grocery shopping to the online store. In any case, the websites on aBay and Amazon seemed reliable and I would dare order products from those online stores.
I am wary of online shopping. I think carefully about what and where to order. Products must always have a free exchange and return policy and the option to pay by credit card. A credit card secures your online purchases. The credit card provides the additional protection provided by the Consumer Protection Act in case of problems. I once had to apply for the price of a product purchased from an online store through Luottokunta. The online store sent me the wrong product and never responded to my messages asking for instructions on how to return the product.
I travel a lot (or traveled before the Korona pandemic). I plan and book the trips myself. I do not use the services of travel agencies. Almost all flight and hotel booking systems are familiar to me. I usually make travel price comparisons using Trivago, Booking.com, Hotels.com and Scyscanner. Sometimes there are huge price differences between hotels and flights offered by different sites. You can save hundreds of euros by comparing prices.
APPLICATION FROM MY OWN FIELD: TERVEYSKYLÄ – MY PATH
Terveyskylä´s My Path is an online platform that provides digital social and health services. My Path service includes digital care pathways, remote appoinments and self-care programs. The service has dozens of different treatment pathways for treating different diseases and health problems. You can become a customer of the digital treatment path with a health care referral. Through my work I am familiar with Terveyskylä´s treatment pathways that specialize in mental health challenges. As we all know, mental health services in Finland are congested. For example, getting into therapy requires going through a long and laborious process. It may take several months acces to treatment. The My Path service can be used to provide quick help to the acute situation of clients with mental health problems and to initiate treatment through a digital service. The service provides patients with an mobile application that makes treatment and instructions always available. My Path and app are easy to use.
You can read more about Terveyskylä´s My Path:
Omapolku | Terveyskylä.fi (terveyskyla.fi)
DIGITALIZATION AND DIGITAL GAP
In today’s world, living without using virtual services can be very difficult. The services of small municipalities have been run down and the agencies closed down. Services are centralized in large population centers and on the Internet. An example is banking services, which have largely moved to online banking. In the worst case, the digital gap can contribute to social exclusion.
However, it must be remembered that people have a number of different reasons for not using digital services. This is often due to a lack of the necessary equipment, lack of IT skills or fear. By increasing training and guidance on the subject, we can lower the threshold for using digital services. Education should be targeted in particular at older people.
SELF-REFLECTION
The theme of this section was familiar to me. I could have written another article on the subject if it hadn’t been so challenging for me to produce the text in English. The process confirmed my view that I utilize a wide variety of virtual services, devices, and applications in my work and everyday life. For this I can thank my own husband, whose IT skills and interest I can utilize.
MY COMMENTS
DIGI CITIZEN – Heini’s site (savonia.fi)
Digi Citizen – Mirja’s blog (savonia.fi)
Hello world! – Laura’s site (savonia.fi) (Digi Citizen page didn’t have a comment field)