Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela)

I know Kela’s organization and operations quite well, as it is my employer and I have worked there for the past 17 years.

At the moment, I only receive child benefit from Kela, but during my life Kela has also paid me study grant, study loan and general housing allowance.  When I was expecting my child Kela paid me parental allowance and I have also received a maternity package provided as a maternity grant.

Today, the most common reimbursement I receive from Kela concerns doctor’s or dentist’s fees in private practice or medicine expenses. Usually these reimbursements are provided to me directly at the pharmacy or at private health care unit.

Through my work, the free European Health Insurance Card is also familiar to me and I have owned it for years.

OmaKanta

OmaKanta (My Kanta) is a nationwide service where you can, for example, see your own health records, prescriptions and the EU digital COVID-19 vaccination certificate. To use the service you will need online bank IDs, mobile IDs or ID card for online services. The most natural way for me is use online bank IDs, because I usually browse OmaKanta by mobile and the access code app is quickly available on my phone.

Keva

Unfortunately the service was out of order and I couldn’t log in. However, I have used this service many times before. Regardless of retirement age, I remember that my estimated pension wasn’t as big as I would want it to be. My lowest retirement age is 66 years and 9 months and target age is 69 years 4 months. If I remember right, my future pension would be approximately 60% of estimated salary.

Digital shops

I use a lot of digital shops and would consider myself as ”heavy-user” of them. Whenever possible, I first look for the product I need on the Internet. I use both Finnish and foreign online stores, such as eBay, which was mentioned in the assignment.

I find it easier and faster to search a product and compare prices online. At the same time, I see the stock quantity of the product without having to go from one store to another. In several cases material and technical information are often way better presented online. In larger retail chains, there is barely no difference in prices compared to their local store. However, postage or customs can increase the price, when buying online, making the product actually a little more expensive that way. 

For this assignment I visited eBay. In general, product descriptions are done there well and comprehensively, and prices are somewhat cheaper than in Finland. The reliability of a seller is quite easy to judge based on the feedback he or she has received. Because the product is not seen in advance, it is possible that it does not meet expectations or description or the product never arrives.  Fortunately, this has never happened to me. In my experience I find eBay trustworthy when you look closely at seller reviews or/and product details.

Service on my own field

The service I use almost every day is Kela’s Medicinal Products database, which contains up-to-date information about all medicines on the Finnish market and also information about reimbursable emollient creams and clinical nutrients. Service is very helpful when I have need to check price, reimbursability or pharmaceutical equivalence of the medicine. I find the service reliable because the information is based on a database maintained by my employer Kela. I also consider it very easy to use, because I can look up information with many search criteria such as name of the product,  active substance or Nordic Article Number.

Digitalization and digital gap – risks and challenges

Digitalisation is changing services and move them increasingly online. It brings a bunch of opportunities but also threats.  In the future many services may not even be available face-to-face at all. Not everyone has the knowledge, skills or tools to use digital services, which can put people in an unequal position. For example, age, financial status, health problems or inadequate internet connections may exclude a person from services. There is a danger that such people may fall almost entirely out of the information society.

Comments to others

I commented Johanna’s, Elli’s and Tuuli’s blogs:

“Hi Johanna! You brought up good perspectives about the digital gap for older people and the accessibility of services. Good internet connections and information technology may not allow the use of virtual health services if they are too complex to understand. But as you said, digitalised social and health services are here to stay, and I share your thoughts on how important it is to help disadvantaged people access them.“

*****

“Hi! It was interesting to read your thoughts and experiences with online shopping. For some reason, I’ve always ended up booking a hotel room on the hotel’s own website, but your description encouraged me to get to know Booking.com better.“

*****

“Hi Tuuli! Congratulations on a great performance on the Digital Competence Test! As I read your description on safety issues, it felt like you were writing about me! I recognize that I am sometimes just as “carefree” and, for example, often miss the terms of use -section. I also need to pay more attention to these things.”


Digital Competence Test

My overall result from the Digital Competence Test was 64 %, which was a little bit better than I expected. According to the description I am on level 4 where users are able to perform well-defined tasks and solve non-routine problems independently. As the picture shows, there is a room for improvement in many area.

Self evaluation

Although some of the things in these tasks were familiar in advance, something new was also involved. For example, I had never heard of the Digital Competence Test, and the results from it made me think more closely about my digital competencies and areas for improvement. Since these assignments were the first for this course, I also learned a lot about updating the blog as well as adding content to it, which I experienced a little joy of success.