KELA and OmaKanta  

I have taken care of many things at KELA during my life. Because I have children, I have received maternity and parental allowance, child home care allowance and child benefit. Maternity packages have also been a great benefit in Finland. When my children were small, I sometimes worked part-time and received partial care allowance. I have helped my children with applying the housing allowance. I have also applied for retired care allowance to my mother with Alzheimer. I did not have a European Health Insurance Card myself. I have ordered it now. I have ordered the card for my two children, when they have been on a Erasmus+ trip to Europe with their school. 

It is easy to log in to OmaKanta. I use my online banking credentials to log in. Health information has been compiled well in the service. It’s good that the service has vaccination information. For a long time, I only had my vaccination information on a cardboard card. I lost the card and for a long I had no information about my vaccinations. I finally got my vaccinations and previous information in order through occupational health care. I recently tried to open my vaccination information from OmaKanta, but the link did not open. I will have to try later if it was just a temporary service glitch.  

Keva 

I had probably never visited Keva’s website before. Keva’s pension calculations have been sent by post many times. It was good that the assignment guided me to visit the website. At the same time, I updated my contact information because my phone number or email address weren´t there. I also added that I do not want paper mail from Keva. At the moment, my lowest retirement age is 66 years 4 months. I wasn´t able to calculate the pension for a 63-year-old. The calculator had already calculated that if I worked 68 years and 2 months, I would receive 278 € more in pension. We will see how high the retirement age will be when my retirement is due. 

Online stores 

I use digital stores sometimes. I regularly order a product from an online pharmacy that is not available at a local pharmacy. Ordering is easy, delivery is fast and the price is good. I have also ordered some things from foreign online stores. A few years ago my visa card had been used at an online casino. My bank informed me that there was suspicious activity happening on my card. In the end, I found out that about a thousand euros had gone from my card to an online casino. I filed a complaint and eventually got my money back. That event taught me that in the future, I will use PayPal payment service in foreign online stores for my security. The Temu online store has been in the headlines a lot recently. I see ads all the time, so much so that they have started to be annoying. I once ordered a cheap swimsuit and pants there. The clothes were not what they were supposed to be. I was wondering if I would bother to return them. However, I decided to return them anyway and to my surprise the return was really easy. 

Online service in my field 

My choice from my field is Terveyskylä online service. I work as a medical laboratory technologist in a nuclear medicine unit. I have known about Terveyskylä, but I have  never really looked into it before. I read other blog posts and I noticed that the Terveyskylä online service had been praised a lot and not without reason. There’s a lot of information in there. I thought about the reasons why I haven´t used the online service that much in my own work. One reason is that we only see patients when they come to us for examinations. The appointment booking unit provides preparation instructions to patients. I don’t know if the staff in the clinic that is booking the appointment will tell patients about the information found in Terveyskylä. The patient instructions include a link to Terveyskylä tutkimukseen.fi online site. I am wondering if patients understand that the link will open to Terveyskylä online sites without explanation. When reading the patient instructions electronically, the existence of the link is clearer, but it may go unnoticed in the paper version. Our unit has made a great video about isotope research that you can see in Terveyskylä. 

A video is worth a thousand words, so I wish patients knew how to go and see it. The video shows the entire research process in a minute and seeing it could help the patients. 

Digitalisation and the digital divide 

It is more difficult to take care of things if you are unable or unwilling to use digital services. It needs to be possible to take care of things without digital skills, for example by phone. However, providing telephone services is expensive. It is a difficult question. Digital support could be available easily, but it still does not eliminate the need for telephone services. There are always people who are unable to get things done online. 

Digital Competence Test 

The digital competence test was interesting and the result of the test was truthful. I’m interested in technology and want to keep up with developments. I don´t share my life in social media and you could see that my worst or best digital skill. There are many sides to this, but I think social media has a bad effect on people’s well-being. Social media usually only shows the good side of life. For me it doesn´t feel natural to share my life on social media. I would like to know the people I share my life with. 

Self evaluation 

This assignment allowed me to gain new knowledge. Perhaps the best thing was that I got to know the Terveyskylä online service better. I plan to talk about it to others and encourage its use at work. It certainly provides reliable information and can be recommended to patients. Visiting Keva’s website made me think that we need to take better care of our own well-being, as the retirement age will rise. 

I commented on Hanna’s blog, My Digital World and My Digitalised Working Environment -journey