KELA
KELA (the Social Insurance Institution of Finland) is a government agency that provides basic economic security for everyone living in Finland. I´m sure that most people are using/ have used KELA´s benefits. It supports people in different life situations. Kela pays benefits for example for conscripts, disability, families, students, rehabilitation and sickness. When I was all day student,I got student financial aid and housing benefits. Also when I had my first child, I recived a maternity allowance, parental allowance and child benefit from KELA.
Now I’m paying healthcare fee to KELA. You need to pay it even you wouldn’t use the student healthcare services. I already have a European health care card, because I´m travelling a lot.
MyKanta (OmaKanta) is a digital website, where you can see your own health data and prescriptions. You can also view laboratory test results, renew prescriptions and make a living will. I use MyKanta quite often, aboat once a week. I also can check my childrens health records in MyKanta. Logging to MyKanta and authentication takes place with bank codes, a mobile certificate, electronic identity card or a social and health care proffessional card or organisation card issued by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. I use bank codes or my health care proffessional card to logg in to service. I haven´t had any problems to use this service.
KEVA
Keva is an independent community under public law that administers the pensions of public sector employees and aims to enhance work ability of the employees. Keva has also a digital service where you can for example check your pension record and the pension you have earned to date or estimate your pension using the pension calculator. I logged in to the digital service with my bank credentials again and checked my own information.I have never used Keva´s website before and I really didn´t know what is my retirement age, but we have laughted at work that we will never retire, because our retirement age is so high. According to Keva’s calculator, my lowest retirement age is almost 68 years. I think it´s quite private thing to tell my pension to everyone, but there is quite big difference in pension retireing in 63 years or 68 years.
Online shopping
I visit and shop quite a lot in digital stores, because it´s so easy nowadays. Also the prices are much more lower than prices in local shops. I mostly buy clothes and shoes to me and my family, but also home decore and furniture sometimes from known online stores. Usually I compare prices in different online stores. Our family travel a lot and different online hotel and travel agencies. I haven´t had any problems with online shopping, but I always read other costumers comments.
Services and applications in health field
I use Healthvillage.fi (Terveyskylä) website every day. Health village is a public online service developed by Finnish university hospitals. Health Village offers information and support for everyone, care for patients and tools for professionals. The content of the service has been produced by social and health care professionals together with the users of the service. There is 33 virtual hubs that are built around different themes. I really like to use this kind of website to guid the patient, because it´s easy to undestand text´s meaning.
Another digital platform that I use almost every day is Teams. The use of Teams increased wildly during the corona pandemic. Teams works as a platform at our workplace. We use it for different announcements such as the day’s program and new instructions. Through Teams, you can also participate in the organization’s various trainings. Nurses and doctors can send messages trought this platform, so it helps a lot when you don´t have to call or find a doctor.
Digitalization and digital gap
Digitalization creates a lot of opportunities for us, but there is also quite many challenges. These people who doesn´t use virtual services are at risk of being left out of the services. I also think that this kind of people also have difficulties to manage different everyday life things like banking and health care things.
Digital competence test
The digital skills test was interesting. My results wasn´t suprising. My strength was safety and in everyday life I am quite careful aboat what and how I use certain services or applications. My weakest areas were communication and production.. Solving digital problems and exploring new ways to utilize technology is not my forte. There is lot to learn, even if I´m using different digital systems daily.
Self- reflection
These assignments gave me a good overview of many digital applications. The digital competence wheel was a new thing to me. Reading other student´s blogs and experiences in the digital world is really interesting.
I visited and commented on:
Satu´s blog: https://digitalworldadventure.wordpress.com/digi-citizen/
Matti´s blog: https://blogi.savonia.fi/oksisto/digi-citizen/
Outi´s blog: https://blogi.savonia.fi/outimetsaranta/digi-citizen/
Hi Maarja,
you brought up the same thing as me: people who don’t use digital services is more difficult to take care of things such as the bank and health matters. However, I also want to believe that there are fewer and fewer people, who do not want to use digital services. I believe that many older people have also noticed, how fast and easy doing business can be with the help of digital services.
Hi Maarja!
Discovering the digital skills test was a fresh experience for me too.
The results of the test were very similar for us.
I hope that the digital skills test feedback encourages you to further develop your digital skills =)
About the Digitalization and digital gap: I believe that with professional guidance it would be possible to create a safe environment for learning about digital services, for example as a workshop activity, but this would require more resources, which are already in short supply in the health sector. On the other hand, there are also situations where not using e-services may also be a conscious choice on the part of the individual. I believe that this must also be taken into account when developing services.
It was nice to hear your thoughts too.
-Sanna