My earliest memories of computers are from the late 1980’s, when a boy living next door had his first computer, a Commodore 64, with the amazing Super Mario game on it. I tried playing the game and it was an exciting experience. Ten years later, I got my own computer and mobile phone when I started my studies of biomedical laboratory technologist in another city. I still remember how great it felt to write study reports on a computer and not by hand. Luckily, my studies included some courses about how to use computers and programs and those courses gave me good practice and increased my skills. At that time, I could not have guessed how important a role computers and digitalization would play in my life and work in the future.

Nowadays in my work, digitalization is involved in everything and everywhere, and I use several research equipment software in patient examinations every day, as well as the hospital’s own intranet and personnel management and working time tracking software. The change can be seen in the fact that work is no longer tied to place and time. Activities of the organization is to be paperless in future and digitalization helps in achieving this goal. In connection with my work duties, I must know how to search for substance information on the internet from updated, safe and reliable sources of information, for example about various diseases and medicines. I think the challenges in everyday work are using different software and maintaining a level of expertise. especially with information that is update and reliable. In addition, I use e-mail and the Teams program in my work to communicate with colleagues and in multi-professional cooperation with different hospital units.

Because of digitalization, handling some work tasks is faster and smoother today than before. In my own work patient contact cannot be completely replaced by robotics or Artificial Intelligence. Face to face patient contact is needed at the start of the patient examination process or turning on the medical research device related to the research. For successful patient examination personal connection with patient is important. For example, guidance of patient.

In the future, physiological patient examination devices will certainly be smaller and more user-friendly. Possibly, the medical research device could be picked up from the agreed place and then, using communication software, online patient guidance is provided via a network connection, and the patient does not have to come from a longer distance to the healthcare unit. There are already a lot of digital transaction services in use in health care, which can be used to give advice related t self-care, and good experiences have been gained from these services.

It is certain that these changes will affect the role and tasks of laboratory professionals in the future, but I personally believe that the skills of different laboratory professionals will be needed in developing better processes. In the future the focus of the development would be in deeper understanding and expertise.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In healthcare, artificial intelligence has become a part of our everyday life, whether we like it or not. We may feel afraid of the new and wonder if artificial intelligence will replace human work force, but we can also see this as an opportunity and not only as a problem. The world is full of many kinds of artificial intelligence-based medical device and software that we use in our daily work. Digitalization helps in many work tasks, but you also need to be aware of possible risks and issues related to information security. The use of artificial intelligence is at different levels in different actors and functions of healthcare, because the needs of the units are different. In my daily work, I use the electronic health record (EHR) system Lifecare, the radiology information system (RIS) and many other software to achieve fast and accurate storing and transfer the patient data. The purpose of the RIS system is to improve the access to information, the diagnosis process and the making of treatment decisions by combining software units and to organize statistics.

Digitalization has significantly changed the health care sector’s job descriptions and employee competence priorities over the past decades. During the Covid pandemic, healthcare and many other sectors had to quickly make changes in operating methods so that operations could continue as well as possible. Robotics is already widely used in clinical laboratory automation, but robotics cannot be used so easily for all aspects of laboratory work. Also, the constant development and automation of the laboratory sector increases the need to make new innovations and use artificial intelligence as comprehensively as possible in the different stages of the laboratory work process. It is certain that these changes will affect the role and tasks of laboratory professionals in the future, but I personally believe that the skills of different professionals should be developed for special expertise in expert tasks.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The European Union (EU) has drawn up the data protection and information security law, which was introduced in 2018. The regulation applies not only to the European region, but also to the processing of EU citizens living elsewhere. This data protection regulation instructs organizations to collect, process and store personal data securely and in accordance with the person’s consent. I think it is important to consider the importance of individual data protection and the value of consent with this GDPR regulation, so that organizations that collect and use personal data take responsibility for the comprehensive processing of data in accordance with the regulation. The sanctions given by the EU to organizations for violating the regulation are very harsh.

ChatGPT

I have not used the ChatGPT before, but I have tried other forums that use artificial intelligence (AI) about the result. I asked the ChatGPT program a few questions related to health care. I wanted to get answers about patient safety, personnel orientation and cyber security. The answers I received were quite good in content and understandable. However, it turned out from the answers that they were presented at a general level and the software was not able to understand and respond to more detailed information. ChatGPT is helpful tool when we want to have answers given from a general perspective, but in work life things often need to be considered in more detail, considering the organization’s operations.

Self-evaluation

The study materials of the course and the questions related to the theme were useful and helped to get to the topic. My own amount of knowledge has grown about digitalization and my understanding has expanded more comprehensively about the effects and risk of digitalisation in my own work and privacy life. I am eager to learn more about information security, because it plays a significant role in patient work. Through my own work, I am familiar with information security procedures, but after reading more about of the GDPR content and effects have become clearer to m. I have been always very carefully about my own personal tasks but in the future, I will pay more and more attention what kind of information I want to hand over to which entity and for what purpose.

I commented these two blogs:

Anna-Karoliina Kiviaho:  DIGI SOCIETY | Karoliinan ajatuksia

Julia Lindroos: DIGI SOCIETY – Julia´s Blog