Berlin While the new health minister, Karl Lauterbach, has just postponed the start of the digital e-prescription in Germany, every Finn can easily get Kanta prescriptions via the electronic health card. “That was the breakthrough for Kanta when everyone could get prescriptions from doctors via this electronic access,” says Teemupekka Virtanen, who developed Kanta for the Finnish government.
The 59-year-old has set up the Finnish e-health system since 2006, including a Corona app in the Kanta system – well before there were corona apps and electronic vaccination certificates in Germany.
All patient information is now stored in Omakanta, “My Kanta”, via which users can even log in using bank access data: all blood tests, X-rays, diagnoses, prescriptions – right up to organ donation or living wills.
“After all, people want those treating them to know the entire medical history when they visit a practice or hospital and that further examinations are not unnecessarily carried out,” says Virtanen. The state assumed the 40 million euros in development costs, now health insurance companies, pharmacies and providers of health services each pay a few cents per use – 15 to 20 million euros in operating costs annually.
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Finland’s far-reaching digitization of the healthcare system – in which the large amounts of data are anonymously also made available to companies – has led Bayer, Pfizer, Roche, GE Healthcare and Novartis to invest millions in Finland.
“We are a Nordic society, we are not so afraid of the government,” says Virtanen from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, explaining the existing trust in electronic medical records and health systems.
“It’s all a question of trust”
Social Democrat Timo Harakka agrees: “It’s all a question of trust,” says the Finnish minister, who, like the FDP politician Volker Wissing in Germany, is responsible for the transport and digitization department.
Finland did everything possible for data protection and network security, and that already when the networks were set up in the 1990s: “We thought of the highest level of security because of a great power that is not called China,” says the minister. without mentioning by name its large neighbor Russia, from which Finland only gained independence after the October Revolution in 1917.
Today Finland has “the most efficient networks in the world”, which is why many IT companies test their network equipment and applications in their home country, Harakka emphasizes. 70 percent of his compatriots already have a 5G network available, in the city of Oulu, where the IT group Nokia has its headquarters, there is even a 6G network on a trial basis. This would make industrial applications of artificial intelligence possible in real time.
Finland, which introduced the world’s first data flat rate, wants to be the first EU country in the “Digital Compass” planned by the EU by 2030: The Finnish digitization plan should be in place by April at the latest, in which the digital rights of all citizens, the exact timetable for the expansion of faster and more secure digital infrastructure and “equal, fair conditions for all European companies” would be manifested, says Harakka.
“Smarter laws and less bureaucracy”
Because a country like his with only 5.5 million inhabitants does not have the money to distribute such large research grants as France, for example, says the minister. But: “We have smarter laws and less bureaucracy.” That attracts investors and researchers.
Finland has had the Europe-wide electronic proof of identity (ID) required by the EU by 2030 for years. You can use it to log into Kanta or get a car from a rental company. And Finland has been demanding the right to its own data (my data) as EU law “for six years now”.
More: Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin – “The EU countries must be on solid economic foundations again.”