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Digital Healthcare and Mental Illness in The Future

Mental illnesses and disorders has grown in our society and a need for help has explode in health care services. Mental illness still carries stigma and embarrassment among people which makes it harder for people to come out with their problems and get help. Most people look for help from different websites and chats. When looking for help, people must be critical because websites and chats are not always held by professionals.

I found one good article about digital services for people with mental illnesses and how they can get help. The article “A mental health workforce perspective on technology-enhanced youth mental health service delivery” brought up that most of the services and help for mental illnesses is based on different apps and internets self-help sites. These sites and apps are most meant for them with mild mental problems. The article also brought up that the current services are most based on risk and how to recover from illnesses. It would also be useful to create services that has a preventive effect on mental illnesses and problems. Like the article says, most help services are based on phone apps and websites, even though the traditional help is based on professional and patients face-to-face contact. The result shows that digital services in mental health services can have a good impact on the recovering, but the best result comes when digital services is used together with the traditional face-to-face contact.

I agree with the article about the traditional face-to-face contact being crucial in mental health services because it develops a safe relationship between the professional and the patient. I also agree that the digital services can have a beneficial effect on people because it gives help also outside the professional services.

How will the mental health services look in the future? I think it will get more digitalized and based on internet websites where people can get help as an anonym and around the clock which is, in my opinion, good. Like I wrote in my last post about Terveyskylä, I hope that there would be more that kind of websites and services available for them who needs help. I would like that in the future the digital services also give people an opportunity to talk with professionals over video chat or something that reminds of traditional face-to-face contact, even though it is still basted on internet. Because the technology develops quickly, there is a chance that the digitalized future is here sooner than we think.    

References:

Orlowiski, Simone; Lawn, Sharon; Matthews, Ben; Venning, Anthony; Wyld, Kaisha; Jones, Gabrielle; Winsall, Megan; Antezana, Gaston; Schrader, Geoffrey& Bidargaddi, Ninranjan, 2016. The promise and the reality: a mental health workforce perspective on technology-enhanced youth mental health service delivery. R E S EAR CH A R TIC L E s. 13

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Terveyskylä

In week four we had as mission to look at different digital health sites and one of the websites draw my attention called Terveyskylä.

Terveyskylä is a digital health website where professionals and patients has collected all kind of information and material for people who need help. My first thought about the website was that it is a perfect website for them who need help and want to read more about something concerning their health. Terveyskylä has categorized all health problems in their own houses which makes it easier for people to find the help and information they need. After you choose one of the houses, you end up on the website where they have collected all kinds of information and articles of the problem and how you can get help.

I choose to look more at the mentalhub which is a site for different mental disorders and problems that people struggle with. I like how the site has categorized the problems in different ages like children, teen and adults. The website has also a 24/7 help and a discussion site where you can get help as anonym which also make it easier to get help. This website is a good site for them who want to read more about something or has difficult to get help from professionals because it can be a sensitive subject to talk about. As we know, more and more teenagers struggle with all kind of mental disorders and the problem has grown in our society. This site is a perfect place for teens to read more or discus anonym and ask questions they have been thinking about.

As I wrote in my second post about the definitions, strategies and policies the services are going online and be more digitalized, which mean that more help over internet. As I wrote earlier this make it easier for people to get help. Like many people now days, they go to Google and write their symptoms and the answer is always cancer or pregnancy which causes anxiety. That is why I think Terveyskylä is a perfect website where you get realistic and professional answer.

 References

Terveyskylä, available: https://www.terveyskyla.fi/# brought 21.5.2017

Mielenterveystalo, available: https://www.mielenterveystalo.fi/aikuiset/Pages/default.aspx

brought 21.5.2017

Van Gemert-pijnen, Lisette; Peters, Oscar & Ossebaard, Hans. 2013, Improving e Helath. The Neatherlands: Eleven international publishing s.

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Equality of service availability

As I wrote in my two latest blog posts, there is a risk of exclusion and un equality in digitalization and e-health. As it came up in the article, e-health can offer patients a higher quality of healthcare service. That means investments which must be paid by government and patients. Because of higher quality of service, patients must be ready to pay of the good service.

Finland is known by the good healthcare and the equality between rich and poor which means that everyone has a right to an excellent quality of life and same right to good healthcare.  Now when digitalization and e-health is expanding in socialites, there will be bigger differences between the rich and poor. That will make Finland more like the other counties in the world, where the gap is wider. This means there will be more different socioeconomics group and competition between people.

From an ethical prospection, there are many sides to think about. I think everyone should have the same right to good health and opportunity to service they need. On the other hand, everyone should have a right to pay for service and higher quality of health if they want. But it has to be optional not a government law or request.  

Even though I think it’s good that there is private service for them who are ready to pay from there health, it shouldn´t reduce the quality of local hospitals and services.  There is always a risk that the local services are going to be private services, which make it harder for the lower social economics groups to get help. Also, the discussion about cutting down the amount of health services is concerning because it makes people unequal.  

Even though e-health has many good aspects for the healthcare and it’s going to make quality better, there can be many problems for the different socioeconomic groups and provoke more un equality between people. What do you think about the equality of people in the health sector? What about private services?

 References:

Miesperä, Anni; Ahonen, Sanna-Mari & Reponen, Jarmo. 2013, Ethical aspects of eHealth

Ͳsystematic review of open access articles. Oulu

 Van Gemert-pijnen, Lisette; Peters, Oscar & Ossebaard, Hans. 2013, Improving e Helath. The Neatherlands: Eleven international publishing

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do you see that the definitions, strategies and policies that govern digital health and welfare are realistic and possible to execute?

In the modern health- care there are many things that are going to change soon; the service is going to be digitalized and the information is easier to get. The health policy is under a change which means new definitions, strategies and policies. In the updated strategies, the goal is to make the health-care more digitalized and easier for patients and professionals to get files and information they need. The paper files are going to changes to bits on internet which makes it easier for all professional to get the information of the patients. That will make it easier to get help around Finland and other countries in EU. I think this is a very good thing because it makes the world and people more worldwide and open to new things. In addition, digitalization and the information moving to internet gives a possibility to look at your own files and prescriptions on Kanta, which gives you a feeling of knowledge of your own life.

In the new strategies, the plan is to make more services online which makes it easier for people to get help without going anywhere. In my opinion, this is good for them who have tough time to get help and it’s easier to get help over the internet. The negative side is that it’s harder to communicate over internet than face to face.

As I wrote in my last blogpost, digitalization is a big reason to why someone has a risk for exclusion from the society. Even though the strategies have a plan to make the health-care more equal there is a substantial change to make the society more unequal because there are so many who doesn’t have the resources for internet.

I think there are many good things with the new policies and strategies and I have a good feeling about the possibility to make a change for the world.

 References

What is e-health. 2001, available: http://www.jmir.org/2001/2/e20/ brought: 7.5.2017

Räty, Laura; Huovinen, Susanna & Haatainen, Tuula. Information to support well-being and service renewal e-health and e-social strategy 2020. Edita Prima s. 31

Van Gemert-pijnen, Lisette; Peters, Oscar & Ossebaard, Hans. 2013, Improving e Helath. The Neatherlands: Eleven international publishing s. 

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Do you see that digitalization will change the everyday life of individuals and professionals in the field of health and welfare?

We live in year 2017 where the most thinks have change and the digitalization has grown in our society. Because of the good healthcare in the world people live longer which means there is more elderly people than before. Because of the grown knowledge of health and developed technology, people get more information of healthcare and services. All the information will sooner or later be moved to the internet and the world will get more digitalization which mean more computers and technology. How the digitalization will change the everyday life of individuals and professionals is hard to say because it so much to think about. For the professionals, it means their job will get more digitalized and thy need to handle more skills. On the other side, it helps them to get more information of their patients, but for the patients it means more robots and less human contacts. Digitalization has many good sides in elderly people’s lives since it gives them opportunity to live longer at home with the help of security/health wristband, and easier to take care of their health and disorders. There are many disorders that has got easier to see and recognize because of the developed digitalization. In addition, digitalization has helped many people to improve their health and take care of problems before it gets bad. Digitalization has also effected on people’s social life’s and made it easier to network with family and other people with same problem or same minded. Because of the grown digitalization and technology there are many people who doesn’t have skills or resources to use for example computers, which means they get exclusion from the society and from the growing health care and services.  (Van Gemert-pijnen et. al 2013)

 References:

Van Gemert-pijnen, Lisette; Peters, Oscar & Ossebaard, Hans. 2013, Improving e Helath. The Neatherlands: Eleven international publishing s. 36

The helath aware world. 2015, available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrq9nvnbV-4&feature=youtu.be brought 1.5.207

What is digital inclusion. 2009, available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF9wzn4lelk brought 1.5.2017

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