DIGI SOCIETY

I grew up in the late 60's and there were a few digital devices at home: landline phone, radio and color TV. I still remember that green device where you had to dial the phone number one number at a time. The TV was made by Finlux and it was a color TV after all. There were two channels and the channels were changed manually.

When I was in high school in 1984, I got excited about a new exotic subject called computer science. There were a few devices in the school and it was similar in shape to our TV but smaller. The name of the device was MikroMikko and it had a floppy drive and several hundreds of central memory. As far as I remember, the machine was used by placing the memory stick in the floppy drive, turning on the power, and the DOS operating system was loaded from the floppy and then the desired program was started. I saved things I did on lerppu.

I was studying to be a nurse in the late 80's - early 90's and my boyfriend at the time got himself a mobile phone. It was a Motorola brand and a portable model. It was the size of two bricks. Leaving the car, the Motorola was wheeled into the house where we lived. It cost a lot, at least 10,000 marks and weighed a lot. After graduating as a nurse in the early 1990's, I got my first mobile phone, which was a Nokia brand. A laptop was bought for home

In the 1990's, phones and computers developed enormously, and my digital skills along with it. There were different versions of Nokia phones and PCs developed, we used the computer to report successful training trips to the boss. The development process has been enormous and "IT" has become part of everyday life as a smooth entity. Today, I feel that we are even slaves to computers that have to be tinkered with way too much.

I have worked in many positions during my career. Immediately after graduation, I worked in a university hospital in the dialysis unit, where there were many different machines and devices. Patient information was recorded on paper, but in 1997 the dialysis information system was introduced, where the patients' dialysis information was then recorded. It was a big change. In 1998, I left for other positions as a product specialist and trainer for an international company that markets medical devices. My task was to train these devices in hospitals and dialysis units. In this work, if anywhere, you saw the course of development in the digital sector, as well as the development of equipment and machines. Year after year, various new programs and devices for measuring the dialysis patient's condition were added to the devices, which were trained to use in hospitals.

I worked for 20 years in this position until I returned to being a nurse again and I currently work as a home nurse in home care where I use the computer and the phone a lot. Most of the working time is spent with these devices, maybe too much. I feel that we are tied to technology and there is far too little time left for the actual patient work and talking with the patient. The working time starts when we log in to the PC and the phone and remember the passwords of all these applications in order to get into the systems. You cannot start any patient contact or work unless you have planned the work day and customer visits through the enterprise resource planning system - Hilka, and reported what has been done. Different medical devices are also a part of my everyday life, because every week I go to install remote care devices and medical robots or take photos for the doctor to look at and consult with, for example, of a patient's wound via a NeaLink photo.

Digitization has moved forward not only in patient work but outside of it. I use my smartphone or PC to contact my colleagues or different experts in Team's, Email, Whatsapp and via messages. In my work, I use the intranet every day to search for information, but also when using various applications. On the intranet called Pulssi, work instructions, orientation and teaching materials, etc. can be found in electronic form, and separate templates are no longer written.

Digitalization is also strongly visible in everyday life at home. I watch TV on a smart TV, monitor my heart rate on a smart watch, watch series on a pad, turn on the sauna on my smartphone, monitor the weather station information on my phone. I use social media such as Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram. I try to minimize the use of these because I feel that they take up too much time of my life. However, we are more and more dependent on technology and smart applications, and soon you can say that the phone is growing close to your hand.

The digitalization and technological development of the social and health sector will accelerate even more in the future. It must be remembered that technology does not replace people and human touch, but it would be good if they complemented each other appropriately. I've already seen how robotics is developing in home care, artificial intelligence can be used to do school assignments, virtual contact can be made with customers or be remotely connected to the workplace. Development is developing and the pace is amazing, but user-friendliness and ease should be remembered when developing systems.

The growth of digitization has not only brought good things, because I am increasingly aware of my privacy and the related information security. Almost every day I receive scam messages or notice, for example, that my friend or loved one's Facebook account has been hijacked. I also notice that my smartphone listens to me and I get advertising mail at any time about something I've talked about out loud. Scary isn't it. You can't say anything out loud when you feel like big brother is watching.

At my workplace, information security matters are in order. As I said before, at the beginning of work in the morning, opening the computer and phone and entering passwords into various programs takes time to get to the actual work. Every year, we complete information security-related training, which I feel is very necessary at this time.

In 2016, the general data protection regulation GDPR entered into force and it began to be applied from 2018. I still remember when I worked at Braun in 2018, the company received instructions on the matter. Then I became more and more aware of it. Now that I'm working in healthcare, the matter has become concrete, for example, so that the customers' papers are not visible, but all the information about the customers, including their personal information, is on machines. You also have to be careful when it comes to saving customer data, because the data ends up in Kanta, where the customer can control their content and demand the deletion of incorrect or offensive data. 

Self evaluation:
Through this school assignment, I have learned a lot about digitization. Digitization has a lot of good things, but also bad things. Digitization and awareness of it's risks must be carefully considered at every turn. It's not a good idea to be too open because it can somehow backfire and my information can fall into the wrong hands. Digitization also brings opportunities and I am amazed that I knew how to make these pages. Wohoo!

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