Ministerial working group on sustainable welfare society: Digitalisation is major driver for change in healthcare and social welfare sector

The strategy for digitalisation and information management in healthcare and social welfare sparked discussion at a meeting of the ministerial working group on a sustainable welfare society. The ministers of the working group recognise that digitalisation plays an important role in developing new ways of providing services and using existing information to support people’s wellbeing in Finland.

– The proactive identification of service needs and the automation of statements and certificates, for example, may bring great benefits to patients in the near future, says Minister of Social Affairs and Health Kaisa Juuso, who is also the chair of the working group.

These issues, for example, are the areas with a great deal of development potential. Concrete progress has also been made in the strategy work:

• Information-based identification of service and care needs will be enabled. For example, it will be possible to reduce the burden caused by chronic diseases on the treatment capacity in a preventive manner by identifying undertreated people. 
• Possibilities for automating the medical certificates and statements currently required will be examined so that the necessary information would be compiled from the existing information automatically.
•  The use of artificial intelligence will be promoted and its most promising purposes of use have already been established. We have also analysed the need for legislative amendments to enable the safe but prompt use of artificial intelligence. In the next phase, pilot projects will be carried out together with the wellbeing services counties.
• In addition, as part of promoting the use of artificial intelligence, experts from central government, wellbeing services counties, companies and organisations will be brought together to plan the use of artificial intelligence and the related development of legislation and service models.

The main objective of the strategy is to develop digital services that support people’s ability to independently maintain their health, wellbeing and functioning. This, in turn, will reduce the need for more work-intensive services, lighten the workload of healthcare and social welfare professionals and enable them to meet clients in person more often.

All the objectives of the strategy for digitalisation and information management in healthcare and social welfare will be implemented through the digital healthcare and social welfare programme set out in the Government Programme and through other projects, such as the projects to develop the Kanta Services. The progress of this digitalisation programme will be assessed midway through the government term and the relevance of the objectives at the end of the government term.  

More information

State Secretary Marjo Lindgren, Tel. 0295 342 119, forename.surname(at)gov.fi