KELA

Kela provides financial support in various life situations.  I have received benefit, when I was on sick leave and wasn`t able to work. When I was studying my first degree in nursing I received financial support monthly. When my children were under 18, they were paid childrens allowance.

OMAKANTA

Omakanta is a national service for its citizens and helth care providers. To access Omakanta a person needs to be identified strongly digitally. Person may use personal mobile online banking application or personal id card, which has a microchip in it.

Omakanta stores all persons personal health data which are prescriptions, data of medical and dental treatment, vaccinations, lab results, radiography and immunizations and certificates of COVID infections which a person has had. At Omakanta a person may request a renewal of his/hers prescriptions, sign up for a organ donor or make a will of persons life support care in critical, life threatening events. Kanta service helps health care providers to give better treatment. A person may define which healthcare information is available. A person may choose specific physician visits not to be visible for other healthcare providers in another healthcare organizations.

EUROPEAN HEALTH INSURANCE CARD

When travelling or staying temporarily in EU, EEA country, in Switzerland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland person will get immediate and necessary medical treatment with European Health Insurance Card. Only request is that person is covered health insurance in Finland. Person can apply the card from Kela. When travelling in Northern Countries the European health insurance card is not needed.

KEVA

I visited at Keva’s service and I was redirected to Varma’s service. I got to know current amount of my pension and what it would be if I retire at the age of 63 or 68 years in the future. My retirement age will be around 68 years of age.

DIGITAL SHOPS

I do online shopping sometimes to buy clothes or homeware or something for my pet. Before making the decision to purchase some item, I compare prices and I do internet searching about users experiences of the shop. I might ask my grown up children’s experiences, because they are younger and active in online shopping. I sometimes shop online from Bootz. My experience is, that I have to pay extra attention for the final price, if I am looking for the discounts. For example person must remember to add discount codes to get all the discounts. For this assignment, I searched hotel prices of my hometown. Booking.com gave higher prices than the requested hotels own web pages. I compared the prices of certain sunglasses in different web shops in EU. The price range was 119,25-145 €.

SERVICE APPLICATIONS OF MY OWN FIELD

I work as an optometrist. Almost every day I use Opticampus.com web page, where I can calculate my clients horizontal and vertical resultant prizm correction and vice versa. Webpage is reliable, saves my time, so I do not have to calculate resultant prizm correction by myself. Prizm calculator makes my workday much easier. I made a quick search in Google Play Shop of optometry applications. There were learning applications, book shops, eye exercises, calculators and our partners applications. I found one helpful application of our partner (OptiExpert of Coopervision) and I installed it, because it will make my workday much easier, too. I can use the application in contact lens fittings. I also visited in some web pages of competitors in my own field of business. I found, that for example Specsavers UK has more online applications for customers than in Finland. I found it interesting!

DIGITAL COMPETENCE TEST

I did the Digital Competence Test. According to the test my digital skills average is medium. I had goor scores on digital safety and information handling. Lower points I got of the digital productivity and communication. I do not spend my time collaborating on internet. I do not post any kind of information for example to Facebook.

DIGITALIZATION AND DIGITAL GAP

In Finland many everyday activities like banking, healthcare, shopping, making appointments are easier to do online. Sadly, there are a lot of elderly people which  do not own a cellphone, tablet or computer. Great burden is loaded to their relatives, because for example banking services and healthcare is provided mostly online. Every service provider should offer services for elderly people face to face at least on bigger locations. Digitalization is not always a good thing. The risks are that if you a not a fluent user of digital services, you may become scammed. You should be able to verify that you are on a right web page before you try to log in or application you load into your cellphone does not spy on you.

Digitalization will be even in a greater role in the future on our everyday lives and work. Digitalization and computers will do much more our work in the future than happens now. I am concerned of the people, who doesn`t have the opportunity use digital services. People don`t afford internet access or smartphone or doesn`t have enough digital skills. How will they cope with digitalization?

Our personal information is stored digitally. What about safety? What if the information will be used against us?

SELF EVALUATION

This chapter made me think how do I keep up my digital skills in the future? Do I have a profession in the future? New digital equipment,software etc needs money. Small companies in my own field probably do not have financial ability to keep up in development. This may lead to development where big companies will grow even bigger and the small ones will die. This kind of development is sad, because in the last and it affects people’s lives. They have fewer options to choose and prices will rise, that is certain.

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