Kela, or the National Pension Institute, was founded on 16 December 1937. At first, it was, as its name suggests, a pension institution, which is generally used to pay national pensions. Today, Kela’s task is to take care of the basic security of persons belonging to Finnish social security in life situations. to Kela’s operational strategic goals. Kelan plans to secure the population’s livelihood, secure health and independent survival. (Kela 2024.)
It has always been easy to go to Kela’s website and the necessary information can be found easily.
The Kela services I use:
Student card. As a Kela service, by showing a student card, I can get a meal cheaper. Public transport is cheaper with a student card.
Health care fee for university students, Right to use the services of Student health care and others. The fee is paid in any case, even if the service is not used.
Substitutable medicines: medicine substitution for diseases or various creams.
Child benefit: Kela pays child benefit for each child living permanently in Finland until the child turns 17.
When the child gets sick: KELA reimburses part of the healthcare fee. Kela also partially participates in the costs of prescription drugs.
Information about the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC)
As a Finn, you have the right to receive a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) issued by Kela, if you are insured in Finland or Finland covers the costs of your treatment.
The European medical card guarantees that you received medical treatment when you travel or stay temporarily in an EU country, Switzerland, Great Britain or Northern Ireland. Medically necessary treatment means treatment that cannot wait until you return home.
I have a European Health Insurance Card.
sources: www.kela.fi/tietoa-kelasta.fi
OmaKanta is a healthcare-related online service that displays information about the customer’s health and medication recorded by social services and healthcare. From there you can see all your health information and prescriptions.
In the Omakanta service, it doesn’t matter whether you use public or private healthcare services, everyone goes to the national Omakanta.
You can log in to OmaKanta with online banking credentials. It’s easy to log in there and you can easily find, for example, recipe information. This service will be used a lot for myself but also for my child.
Sources: Kanta.fi
Keva is a Finnish pension institution under public law and Finland’s largest pension insurer. Keva takes care of pension matters for municipal, state, church and Kela personnel, and its operations are based on the Public Sector Pension Act and Keva Act matters.
I accessed Keva’s website with my bank credentials and checked my personal information. Keva’s calculator shows that I can retire at 67 years and nine days at the earliest. Talking about pensions can be private, but there is a big difference between retiring at 67 and 70: My pension will increase by almost 20%. So, based on this, you could think that it is encouraged to be in the working life longer.
Sources: Keva.fi
Digital stores
For this assignment, I had to visit digital stores such as eBay, Amazon, Bookin.com and Trivago. The purpose was to evaluate prices compared to local stores. I also tried to consider the adequacy of the information and whether the service is reliable and of high quality.
The deeper I went into the services, the more interesting the review became, Customer reviews and user experiences told how successful the service was from the customer’s point of view. I noticed that the products were cheaper than in the real store. So what is it based on? Maybe it’s due to self-service and the fact that the material is different and cheaper.
The social media Facebook advertises a digital store called TEMU a lot, here I immediately notice the price of the product, how can you pay a euro if the same product is new and can be 100 euros from a local store. Is the product implemented ethically correctly? A cheap product also makes me think that I wouldn’t dare to buy or order.
Bookin.com and trivago seem like honest places based on their websites, but ebay and Amazon don’t give such clear information. Now that I compared and looked at these, I have used trivago’s services and I have already visited bookin’s website before. But I’ve heard of ebay and Amazon, but I’ve never been, and I didn’t order anything. Today, I think about the ethics of the product and how it was made and produced.
Healthcare services and applications
I chose a service, a health village and then a children’s home in my field. https://www.terveyskyla.fi/lastentalo
This page should be used and directed by families and students. Some families are looking for a lot of information about premature birth, for example, so I have directed them to services/websites that are reliable.
Picture: www.terveyskyla.fi/lastentalo
Digitization and the digital gap
When everything goes digital, all people should know how to use virtual services. For example, my grandmother is 88 years old. He is completely lost with the services. We bought him a tablet, but it quickly broke when he pressed the power button too much. Bank services have become more difficult, and it is not possible to travel by bus if no one has already bought a ticket. Otherwise, grandma lives alone and manages on her own, but for banking and other services, she would almost need a guardian.
The risks and challenges are information security. It is increasingly easy to become a victim or to be deceived. You can miss out on services if you don’t know how to use or find the right things.
A lot has been invested in the fact that there are more and more aids, for example online guidance.
Digital skills test – my results
https://digital-competence.eu/dc/report/?uri=ba594a6b9bd8f10414687edc080d29a7
I got the most percentages in the test in information sections and communication. The scores were all a bit similar. The least I got was safety, which was a surprise to me because I think I’m really careful.
Self-assessment
What did I learn from these assignments!
The assignment was really interesting and made me visit pages I have not visited before.
KELA, KEVA and KANTA.FI were already familiar and I have used them before. But shopping sites and this test was new to me. I noticed that every site I opened had a chat robot helping. So this has brought relief to many, that there is even someone to ask.
What did you learn?
Blogs I comment on:
https://blogi.savonia.fi/pauliinaspage/digi-citizen/#comment-25
https://blogi.savonia.fi/markusvornanen/digi-citizen/#comment-5
https://blogi.savonia.fi/sannavihanto/digi-citizen/#comment-2