Health centres in Finland are using an AI model to support the work of nurses and doctors

August 8, 2019

Finland is a forerunner of using the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in public healthcare. Using the service, called Klinik Access, has made the work of nurses and doctors more efficient in over 300 healthcare centres in Finland. The service has freed up the healthcare professionals’ time for the actual treatment work and patient care.

After 18 months of usage, Klinik Access has demonstrated its usefulness at a health centre in the city of Lohja in southern Finland. Klinik Access identifies patient’s urgency and helps the nurses to prioritise the urgent cases. According to the nurses who use the system, Klinik Access makes it possible to handle two tasks at the same time.

When a customer enters their symptoms into a contact request form, detailed prerequisite information about their condition is made available to all medical staff.

“Each day, we assign one person to be the “Klinik nurse”. The “Klinik nurse” also manages the emergency phone service. The great thing about Klinik Access is that it lets you handle two tasks in parallel. You can start handling contact requests submitted through the Klinik system, take an emergency call on the mobile, and then go back to working on the requests”, says Irkka Leimukoski, a nurse at the Lohja main health centre.

An online system also improves time management in other ways. As patients summarize their symptoms using the online contact request form, nurses do not have to spend time going over this information on the phone.

“The Klinik service has given me peace to do my work. If I get a difficult case, I can consult a doctor, as I don’t have to make decisions about treatment immediately over the phone”, the nurse Sanna Villanen says.

Villanen thinks that another upside of the system is the artificial intelligence-generated first assessment of the patient's condition.

The patients at the Lohja main health centre have welcomed the online service. From a patient’s perspective, the main advantage is that they can contact us at any time and do not need to wait for a callback. Klinik Access enables patients to contact their health centre 24/7 online without the wait.

Here is how the patients of Lohja main health centre commented Klinik Access online service:

  • “Easy and straightforward way to contact without the unnecessary wait on the phone just for renewal of the prescription.”
  • “Great service! No unnecessary waiting in line. Instead you can get your matter handled right away online.”
  • “Easy-to-use service and good possibility to tell about your symptoms online. “

Klinik Access is an online consultation & patient flow management software that directs patients to the optimal resource in primary care. The system’s unique algorithm interprets the person’s symptoms to make a provisional assessment, and estimates the urgency of the care needed. Based on this, the person is automatically referred to the right place for care to begin.



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