DIGI SOCIETY
My introduction to digitalization and technology
I was born in 1993, to what I would call a middle-class family. As long as I can remember, we’ve had technology in the house. The earliest device that I recall, was naturally the TV. We would fight tooth and nail with my younger sister, just to see who got to be in charge of the remote. I also recall us always having had the VCR (and then later the DVD-player), another cause to have impromptu sisterly wrestling matches on the living room carpet. When I was about 9, me and my sister got our first gaming-console, PlayStation 2. I still have the same console at home, so that I can play retro games at will. We also had a landline phone on the kitchen counter, and I think my generation will be one of the last ones that sill remembers using them at home. The next leap for me personally, was my very first mobile phone. I got it for my 10th birthday, it was model Nokia 1101, it had sort of burnt orange colored case and most importantly, you could play Snake II and Space Impact with it. After that, the amount of digital apparatuses only grew in our house. I remember my father getting the first computer, and me and my sister would play games on it, when allowed. At 14, I got into Facebook, IRC-gallery and started to hang out with my friends from home by chatting in the MSN Messenger chat. This I think, was my first introduction to digitalization: to be able to chat with a friend or a classmate at home, in a way that would NOT cost me all of my limited text messages. Back in 1993, I don’t think anyone could have imagined how big a difference there would be in the world of technology in little less than three decades. Physical DVD- and game collections are history. One click, and you can stream hundreds of movies, buy pretty much anything online, read or listen any book, video-chat to anywhere in the world and the only thing you need to do all of this, is your phone and a connection to the internet.
I now work mainly in a digital environment. I’m employed by a large company, Mehiläinen Oy, that is highly valued provider of private social and healthcare services here in Finland. My workday consists of dozens of contacts with our patients, none of them face to face. I converse with patients either in the phone, or by chat in the Digital Clinic, to which the patient can access through an app in their phone (I tell more about this app, OmaMehiläinen, on the DIGI CITIZEN page). I personally am based at our office, but roughly 80% of my co-workers are not, and work from home. By the advancements in digitalization it is now not only possible, but even safer, quicker and more convenient due to the covid-19 epidemic, that our patients never meet us face-to-face. Their contact to a nurse or to a doctor happens only in the digital environment, if they so wish. In addition to chatting with a professional healthcare worker, our patients can send us pictures of their wounds, skin irritations, so on and so forth. We can provide them with prescriptions, advice, varying certificates and laboratory referrals. Our patients no longer need to even get out of bed when sick, they can get the care whilst still in their pajamas. Digitalization also allows us to provide to those patients who live in remote areas, or don’t have access to means of transport. Soon our patients can provide us data directly from their health technology devices, such as smart watches or rings, so that we can better evaluate their health and habits form afar.
The GDPR is ever present in my job, since I handle confidential information all day long. In the company I work at, we take confidentiality very seriously. Our programs are very secure I believe, and my employer takes care in instructing all new employees carefully as soon as they start working here. We must never leave our desktop open when we leave the station, and we mustn’t write any passwords down. The Data protection reform is a great thing, but it sure complicates some things too. I am so bad at remembering passwords, and not being allowed to write anything down is sometimes terrifying. After 4 weeks of summer holiday I am supposed to remember which password I used a month ago, and more than once I’ve had to ask help from the IT -department because I just can’t remember.
What to expect, when anything is possible?
Even considering our advancements, it’s still pretty hard to predict what sort of technology our future will hold. I was quite amused while watching the video “Watch your day in 2020” from the course materials. The video was made in 2011 by Corning incorporated, and the predictions in it are mostly still in the realm of fiction. Perhaps in another couple of years we will be there, but for now we are still pretty far from paper-thin displays and smart bathroom mirrors. I think the most common prediction of future technology is the flying car. I think that´s actually quite funny, since find it hard to believe that any government would allow any of us to speed around in the air, considering we cause quite enough damage in cars here on the face of earth.
What about improvements in healthcare? The possibilities are limitless. We have already been using robots in healthcare world for a while now. There are robots that are used as an aid in surgery, such as da Vinci surgical system, care robots used in nursing homes to accompany the elderly and robots that transport supplies inside the hospitals (see links at the bottom of this page). Perhaps we shall some day use drones to pick up patients urine samples from their homes or deliver medicine straight to the door. I find it important, that while our possibilities are vast, we must take care to remember the core of our profession in the midst of all the development, the patient. The digitalization mustn’t replace compassion and humanity in healthcare.
Threats – what is the worst case scenario?
Imagine that you are in an accident. You get taken to the hospital, and connected to several medical equipment that monitor your vitals. The information on the screens is VITAL for your survival. Also vital, is that the doctor in charge of your care gets access in to your files, so that they can see if you have any allergies, past visits to hospitals, medications or other information that may affect your care. Now imagine, that someone, perhaps a nurse or a lab technician gets an email. They open the link in the email, thinking they will be connected to educational website, when in actuality they have loaded a virus in to the computer. The computer is connected to the entire hospital network. Everything in the hospital is connected to this network. The hackers are now in control, maybe they can shut down the entire system, maybe they can edit your MRI results (see a link in the end of the page), your lab results or insert false information to your files. They can also get the information already in your files. They can cause mistakes in your care that may be fatal to you. Some of the scenarios that I described are already possible. With our healthcare moving to ever more digitalized format, will these kind of incidents become the new norm? What if we soon can’t guarantee our patients safety anymore?
Self evaluation
I started my studies in the January of 2022, and have already learned so much. I graduated as a nurse December 2015, and have been working since. It’s really nice to get back to the books for a change! I fancied myself as pretty tech-savvy, but had I only known how wrong I was. Sure, I’m handy with my laptop, but the world of digital healthcare has come as a kind of revelation to me. Much of what was in this courses materials I have at least heard of in one of my other courses, but it was really nice to listen to the ted talks, and read other students articles.
I think that the biggest learning experience for me has been just to see how much is out there. In the future I will certainly remember to keep my eyes and ears open for new developments in health technology, even when my studies end. And at the very least, I want to be et the frontline of digitalization in my current workplace. One more new thing to me in the course of my studies is this format of studying. I have always sat in class, and now all my studies are all in digital form. I also never had a blog before, so this is new territory in that aspect too. I’m excited and look forward to learning even more!
source links:
https://www.intuitive.com/en-us/products-and-services/da-vinci/systems
https://time.com/longform/senior-care-robot/
https://online-engineering.case.edu/blog/medical-robots-making-a-difference
https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/hackers-can-manipulate-cancer-scans.html
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May 1, 2022 at 17:34
You describe scarily well the scenario where a hospital’s network is hacked. I think human error or carelessness will always remain a risk for data security. Digitalization cannot and will not replace humanity in health care, for better or worse.
May 10, 2022 at 12:19
I loved to read your story about how you grew up with different digital tools. I myself was born in 1974 and my first memory of digital tool is VCR-player maybe around 1986.
May 17, 2022 at 12:03
Hello,
Thank you for the interesting post. I use Oma Mehiläinen as a patient and it was interesting to read a little from behind the scenes.
I also loved to read about your childhood memories. I am about 15 years older than you and my firs born child is about 15 years younger than you so it was interesting to read about someone in between.
May 28, 2022 at 15:16
Hi,
It was interesting to read your experiences as I see you as Digi native comapered to me and I have been born 14 years earlier tha you 🙂 It was also very eye-opening to read the digitality’s importance in the healthcare area. And when you start to think, we are all very dependent on the digital systems and data all the time.
June 6, 2022 at 19:55
Roosa, it was nice reading your story. I work in public health and social services also. I can relate to your experiences in terms of what digitalization is in social and health care. You made a great picture of the threats of the future. I’ve been thinking about similar threats on my own blog. I also think that digitalization cannot replace all work tasks in social and health care.
June 22, 2022 at 10:56
Hello Roosa!
Thank you for the immersive text. My own recollections of information technology are from primary school. We gathered the whole school to admire the school’s first computer in the ballroom in 1984. This moment has often occurred to me during these studies.
Threats to the future are a reality. Small human errors among professionals pose a further risk to patient safety now and in the future. We simply have to accept this threat and try to reduce it through our own actions.
July 4, 2022 at 20:27
Hello,
It was interesting to read your post and story. I am a little bit older than you and while reading I realized how much digitalization has gone forward in a short time period. It was also really nice to go back in 1990s. I have same kind of memories at those days as you have.
I also think that GDPR is very important to take seriously at your work and your professional field. Your professional data is very sensitive and that”s why an possible information leak is a very big problem. For that reason also data protection requirements are very very high.
December 2, 2022 at 19:39
Digitization brings healthcare services conveniently to everyone’s home. People living in remote areas have an easier opportunity to apply for healthcare services. As a parent of a family with children myself, I also find the possibilities of booking healthcare appointments via the internet to be easier. Along with all the development, however, it must be remembered, as you write in your blog, that digitization must not replace humanity and compassion in health care.