DIGI SOCIETY 

I work as a specialist in an ICMT company, with main focus in health care and primary care. In my job I need to be aware of what is going on nationally and also globally in the health care field so that we can provide our customers the most effective and high quality services that are met with the demands of public health care .  

10 years ago I worked as a nurse in home care. We knew very little of digitalization, work was mostly traditional. Of course we had patient information systems, but for example Kanta services were quite new and to be fair quite underdeveloped. We also were beginning to use self-phones and mobile ERP systems to help navigate our patient work.  

In 2015 I started working in different projects. For example safety services for the elderly, where an elderly person can call for help using a pendant. These systems were analogic at that time and digital solutions were just coming. Nowadays there are only digital solutions that operate in the wireless network.  

In my current work I work closely with different types of digital solutions. I participate in procurement –projects, mostly we do procurements for different digital solutions. My job usually is to do requirement spesifications, with my collegues of course. The most important part of this is to remember that the solutions has to meet with the needs of the health care professionals and patients. Digitalization is not all about the “fancy” digital innovations or solutions, it is about the holistic view on how to do things better using the best tools and possibilities. This is something that need reminding. I find that health care and expecially nursing is a quite conservative sector of profession. It is sometimes quite difficult to view things from a different and new perspective. But this is also the joy of my work, to inspire people to look outside the box and be imaginative in their thinking. I think that this is the direction where we are going and should be going, not just to use different technological tools, but to really implement these to the new processes.  

When talking about work life, major things have happened. I remember that only five years ago, when I had a meeting I always had to go to a meeting room. Even if the meeting was in a different address. What a waste of time to travel accross the town and back for one meeting. Skype (at the time) was rarely used. Even before the pandemic videomeetings started to becom more common. When the pandemic hit, Teams was the only way to have meetings. Now it is very rare to have a “traditional” face-to-face meetings.  

I think that AI is one technology that will be a big thing, there have been some careful suggestions in my company, that in some case we could use solutions like CHAT GPT when searching for information..  

GDPR 

In my work, GDPR has had a huge impact. In my previous and also current job where very higly sensitive personal data, s uch as patient data, is processed,  it is extremely important that they remain confidential. When it comes to patient data, people are also aware of their sensitive data:  Who would like their own health information to be leaked? We’ve seen the consequences for example, in Vastaamo data leak, where people have really suffered from the leak of their data.   

Before GDPR, I also worked with various procurements or test-bed and living lab projects. I feel that very little attention was paid to these matters at the time. When the regulation came into force, attention has indeed been paid to these. For example, in my current job, where I have a lot to do with procurements, data protectionand information security requirements are taken vey seriously.It is a long process involving many different experts and evaluation from many different perspectives. Data protection impact assessments are also carried out, both to different systems and applications and also procesesses. If there is an important update, the security and data protection effects must be assessed. 

While the regulation is very good, it also has its challenges. Development is not very agile and for example the introduction of new technologies, especially in the health and social services sector, can be very long. It is important to ensure that product developers get their solutions ready for use in such a way that it is safe to deploy in the health and social services sector.  This should be taken into consideration in financing innovation and development and also cross-sectional co-operation with different fields of professions. 

On a personal level, I notice that in my free time I do not pay so much attention to what I actually might share about my-self. This is something I need to pay more attention to. It would be interesting and quite scary to see what kind of a “digital twin” I would have, if someone were building one based on the information that might be out there about me in the wonderful world of the internet.  

CHAT GPT 

This is really mind boggling.. I have never used Chat gpt and to honest, have been avoiding it.. It seems a bit scary to me to think about these technologies..  

I asked Chat GPT “ What does a health care specialist of primary health care working for a ICT company do?”  

The answer was quite accurate to what I do. The answer was quite broad, so there were also things that do not correlate straight to my work, but there are of course may kind of spesialist working in the same field as I. The most striking anwer was this : “They would work at the intersection of healthcare and technology, addressing challenges and leveraging opportunities to improve patient care” This is what I think is the core of my job.  

I asked what the future holds for the development of patien data information systems. There was nothing new that popped up that I didn’t already know. Because  

I also asked why I am more productive in my work when I listen to music. Fortunately these days technology makes it possible to use different kinds of work enhancing ways that work for different people. The answer was quite broad in this case also. I think I can relate to all the different aspect that Chat GPT provided.  

CHAT GPT searches the internet quickly, it can provide these answers based on what has been shared in the web. I think this can also bring problems, because people, industries, and communities etc. share all kinds of things, based on their beliefs and different situations, so everything can’t be universally accepted as a truth . The can be so full of false data also, so I would not trust CHAT GPT’s anwers completely. Just like in reading the news, people should think critically on what they read.  

Self evaluation.  

This was interesting thing to think about my own work situatioins regarding digitalization. I think that it has been a big part my work for the last ten years that I haven’t really stopped to think about this quite deeply. This was also a scratch of the surface. I really should stop more often and evaluate myself more deelpy in regards on where I myself am in the present reality of digitalization.