KELA the Social Insurance Institution of Finland

KELA’s services has been very familiar to me over the last years, and I rely on Kela’s services for financial aid at the moment. Kela has made it possible for me to stay home to take care of my son until he turns 3 and to study by providing financial support and security. I was surprised that I was entitled to get child home care allowance and study grant simultaneously which made the decision to stay home easy. I’ve received financial help in form of maternity benefits and allowances, child benefits, study grant and loan. In addition to as mentioned before Kela provides service and benefits in different stages of life such as in sickness, unemployment, disabilities, pensions, and rehabilitation, among other things. I’m very grateful for these social security coverages that Kela provides.

I am entitled to Finnish student health service (FSHS) as I study Savonia’s Master’s degree programme in Digital Health so I’m obliged to pay a healthcare fee in Kela’s e-service. It is mandatory for all students who are registered attending in University of applied sciences in order to use student healthcare services. It’s unfortunate that I must be proactive in paying the fee every semester because the bill doesn’t come to me automatically. There should be a reminder and a notification to pay the bill in Kela’s e-service for every academic term.

I’ve acquired the European Health Insurance card years ago for me and my small boys. It’s very convenient that you don’t have to remember to apply the card when expired as it will be renewed and delivered automatically to your home. I used the card last week for the first time in years during my trip abroad, when I had to register to a private healthcare provider app to book a videoconsultation with a doctor. When registering, I was asked to give a personal identification number and it was self-evident that the Finnish Id number wasn’t an option. The passport number was given as an option, but it didn’t work, so the Id number of the European card worked instead. The card became useful and helped me to book doctor’s appointment and I didn’t need to travel to another city to see a doctor.

Omakanta -My Kanta pages – Kanta.fi/en/citizens

I use Omakanta to access my own and my boys health records, prescriptions and get access to EU digital COVID-19 certificate for travelling purposes or to my employer in healthcare because COVID-19 vaccinations or proof of having contracted the corona virus is required by law when working with patients in hospitals under certain conditions.

I access the My Kanta pages with my personal online banking credentials (ID), which is strong authentication to securely verify the identity of the person using the electronic service.

Interesting fact. Did you know that you can already store your wellbeing data of IoT devices and wellbeing applications in Kela’s Kanta pages?                                      It’s still only for your eyes to see and it includes only certain applications but in the near future your personal wellbeing data from IoT devices and applications can be used in your treatment with healthcare professionals. In the future you can add wellbeing data for example, about Oura-ring or Polar watch to Kela’s website and share the information with healthcare professionals to receive preventive or more individualized patient care.

KEVA – Keva.fi/en

Keva is the largest pension provider in Finland, and it’s intended for public sector employees like me.  My lowest retiring age is 67 years and 4 months, and at the age of 68 the pension amount is about 1800€ monthly. Not very comforting amount considering the current upward direction of price development without the wages following the same upward direction.

MAISA -App of my choice

Maisa is a client digital portal where you can manage social and health services, book an appointment, or communicate with social or healthcare professionals via chat, message or video connection, see your health records or fill self-assessment questionnaires. You can access it in Maisa.fi online browser or with a mobile app. It is used in the region of Uusimaa, to be more specific, cities which uses Apotti (EHR) patient system and HUS units.

Maisa took place in our surgery outpatient clinic when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. It is a great digital tool to give information to patients about oncoming surgery, send reminders of appointments, tests, questionnaires or to chat with patients or connect to colleagues. You can access it wherever you are, so it’s possible for healthcare and social workers to work remotely from home and book for example, a videoconsultation with a patient. It’s an easy way to contact social and healthcare professionals regardless of time and place. It made possible for my colleaguees to work from home.

Maisa uses strong identification so it offers secure solution for remote use with patients or between professionals.

DIGITAL SHOPS

All the digital shops mentioned are familiar to me and I’ve used all of them. I’ve been satisfied with my purchases but I’ve heard that not always the purchased item meets your expectations in terms of size or appearance so you must be careful and read the item descriptions well. I always evaluate reliability of the products based on the reviews left from other customers.

I use a lot of digital shops and evaluate the prices from different search engines very carefully. Buying a Finnair flight can be cheaper in momondo than from Finnair site, but hotels can be cheaper in their own site than using Trivago or Booking.com. It depends. When using search engines such as momondo or ebookers to buy flights I’ve noticed that the prices go up the next day. Sometimes it helps changing your VPN connection to another country in order to get cheaper flights.

DIGITALIZATION AND DIGITAL GAP

In my previous studies Digital solutions -course I also discussed the disadvantages and downsides of digitalization of those who can’t or want to use digital services. The risk factors that emerged was exclusion, isolation, and loneliness. Digitization must not cause exclusion, loneliness, or isolation, nor put in an unequal position, so alternative transaction channels such as phone and physical transactions must be preserved. Users must be included in the planning of digital services and give support in using them. You also need to take into consideration certain customer groups like people who have disabilities, poor or are immigrants when planning and executing digital services. Accessibility to everyone is important so you need to have alternative solutions, because not all have strong identification such as online bank account  so they cannot access all the digital services. In social and healthcare you cannot fully replace face to face care with robotics, automation and technology.

DIGITAL COMPETENCE TEST

SELF-EVALUATION

Most of the given tasks were known to me in daily life and from my previous studies in Savonias course Digital solutions in Social and Healthcare field so there wasn’t a lot of new information in this assignment except the Digital competence test. Digital competence test was interesting and gave me a good insight into where I need to improve myself. For example, automation ability was poor (51%) and storage (61%), so now I can focus on developing more knowledge and skills in that area. Active participation will be improving  in my ongoing studies. Although I realized that networking is essential in my future profession as a digitization expert in healthcare so I must enhance more actively my participation in social media channels.

Users feedback is important to improve digital services so I decided to give feedback to Kela so they would send a reminder/notification about paying the FSHS (Finnish student health service) fee for students. I hate to admit that I had some difficulties in writing english and it took a bit of time. From these assignments I realized that I must improve my professional English, so I’m enrolling in Boost your English – course at Savonia.

Blogs I commented on:

DIGI CITIZEN

DIGI CITIZEN

DIGI CITIZEN