Digitalization in IT system services for social and health care
I’m working right at the heart of social and health care digitalization as a team coach and leader in an in-house company that maintains and develops electronic client and patient information system. My team collaborates closely with our customers to provide and promote innovative digital solutions for their needs. Our goal is also to help standardize customers’ operational routines, improve service efficiency and control costs.
I have witnessed significant, effective changes in our customers’ operations after they began using a unified system across wider regions. For example, reporting and medication management have improved notably. By using a shared system, it’s easier to analyze care processes and patients’ behavior, which enables preventive actions and better service planning. The system can alert end users if a procedure has been missed and can flag high-risk hospital patients using analytics and risk indicators.
We are continuously developing our e-portal (mobile app and online service). Recently, we had great success with the municipality’s dental care with a feature called “Fast Pass,” which notifies patients when earlier appointment times become available. This significantly reduced the number of unused appointments. Previously, it was difficult to efficiently fill canceled time slots, but now the system can do it automatically. Features like this are crucial for optimizing the use of health and social care staff, especially during times of resource scarcity.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is, of course, the next major development being applied in customer and patient information systems. We’re already seeing applications like automatically generated draft messages for patients and summaries of patient data. In the future, AI agents could contact patients proactively, help schedule necessary tests and summarize relevant information for both patients and healthcare professionals. However, as we know, these advanced features are currently expensive, and time will tell which of them will be financially feasible within public sector budgets.
As a team leader, I use digitalization and AI tools to help me create quick presentation drafts, brainstorm ideas, and summarize information. Our company also has its own secure AI tool, a Copilot integrated into our environment, which I use to search and retrieve information from our intranet.
Future with digitalization
It was interesting (and little funny) to watch videos about how life was expected to be in 2025. Clearly, digital development has not yet fully integrated into our everyday lives — and I must admit, luckily. These videos made me reflect on the idea of a “saturation point” — a stage where we might feel digitalization has reached its full or acceptable potential. I hope that in the future,digital solutions will be used to tackle large-scale global challenges, such as the shortage of healthcare professionals.
However, videos made me anxious about the future of privacy. Today’s younger generations are accustomed to sharing everything online. How might this affect our values and boundaries in the long run? How can data privacy legislation keep up with innovation without holding back progress? In the future, everyone will need to have strong basic digital skills — not just for work, but also to navigate online spaces safely and responsibly. We must be able to recognize fake news, avoid unreliable sources, and understand digital risks. Digitalization won’t make everything faster and easier — it will also require us to be more cautious, aware, and adaptable.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came at a critical time. I remember when it became enforceable in 2018 as many companies were busy updating their data policies to obey with the new regulations. I was volunteering in an association, and GDPR provided much-needed guidance for me to how and when we should collect, store, and process our members’ personal data, such as names and contact details e.g. when organizing events for them.
Other positive perspectives with the GDPR are increased transparency, especially regarding how our data is used for marketing. GDPR gave individuals more control over their personal information and raised overall awareness of data privacy. A common, practical example of changes after GdPR is the cookie consent pop-up that appears almost every time you visit a website, giving you options to manage how your data is collected and used. Though the majority I guess won’t give it a second thought and just accepts everything.
As a downside, companies, especially tech firms, have found ways to maintain their ad-based revenue models despite GDPR. For instance, if I want to use a major social media platform without sharing my personal data, I have to pay a subscription fee, agree to share data, or stop using the application entirely. So, the idea that access to my data would default only to me is not fully accomplished.
An open digital society brings great benefits, such as global connectivity and information access, but it also carries risks like targeted advertising and data breaches. Digital services develops continuously so regulation needs to follow as well.
Chat GPT
Like I wrote earlier, I often use our company’s private artificial intelligence (AI) which uses the same language model version GPT-4. So, I have asked many questions from AI already but let’s figure out something new. My questions and Chat GPT’s answers were:
- What are the benefits of the Client Data Repository for Social Welfare system?
Background: My team is currently working on the large-scale Kanta project, which aims to ensure that our electronic client information system is compliant with the legal requirement to store client data in Kanta by September 1, 2026.
For this question, ChatGPT provided a clear, though somewhat generic, list of common benefits. It acknowledged the advantages for organizations, service providers, national authorities, and clients. However, the response could have placed more emphasis on one key benefit: the integration of client data from both public and private social care providers. This integration is a significant improvement—it saves time and money while enhancing the availability and continuity of information across services.
- What kind of changes does this deployment bring for electronic client information systems and their end users?
Chat GPT gave me all the basic technical adjustments that electronic customer information systems must do, e.g. national data structures, no free text, integration part and certification. CHAT GPT did very well with identifying the changes for end users. It also added customers point of view without I asked for it.
I asked the Chat GPT to evaluate it own answers. It found improvements with some simplification and using more real-life examples. In general, the lack of references or sources disturbs me. It makes the use unreliable. Chat GPT is especially at summarizing and at language correction with large volumes of text.
Self-evaluation
The topics covered in this section were already quite familiar to me due to my work. However, the materials—especially the videos and colleagues’ blog posts—helped broaden my thinking and deepen my awareness. I was particularly surprised by how little some aspects of our decade-old future visions have actually changed. This inspired me to explore additional videos imagining life in 2050. Time will tell how accurate those predictions are. Hopefully, the journey toward the future will continue in a sustainable and ethical direction.
I commented these blogs:
A very well-written blog post! You presented the connection between digitalization development and your professional work in a diverse and informative way, with concrete examples. The examples from everyday life and the progress of digitalization were excellent, showing what it has brought along. Regarding GDPR, you highlighted both the benefits and the challenges very well. Your expertise clearly shines through in your text, and the observations you made were interesting. I also found your reflections on the future interesting—where this development might lead, or whether saturation will eventually occur. Good work!
Thanks Roni for your thoughtful comments!
Your comment brought me back here after summer and I realised I’ve forgot to implement some ideas I got during this course!
Also I think, that discussion about AI has been even more intense this autumn than earlier, hasn’t it? Other big thing has been that Australia has introduced a ban on social media for this age group, and several other countries are following. Social-media companies have failed to act ethically and their platforms can be harmful to children under 16. From a regulatory perspective, I think this is a good sign that we take action when self-regulation of social media companies is not sufficient to protect young people and thus legislative intervetions are introduced.