The key development targets for 2024 in the Kanta Services for health care are:
- Saving health care appointment data in Kanta
- Supporting the register maintenance of private service providers that have ceased their activities
- Sharing of patient data with wellbeing applications
- Monitoring access to treatment: assessment of the need for treatment.
Appointment booking in health care services
The possibility to archive and search health care appointment booking information will be implemented in the Patient Data Repository. Through Kanta, appointment booking information will be more widely available to the wellbeing services counties and other health and social services providers.
In the future, MyKanta will enable the customer to view appointment information and access the service provider’s appointment booking system using a link, for example, to cancel and reschedule appointments. A more detailed overview of the customer’s situation can be formed when a primary health care professional can see specialist medical care appointments that have been made for the customer.
According to the Client Data Act, health care appointments about which the customer must be notified must be stored in the Patient Data Repository no later than 1 October 2026.
Read more about archiving and searching appointment booking information (in Finnish).
Supporting the register maintenance of private service providers that have ceased their activities
A private social welfare and health care service provider that is ceasing its activities must, by law, submit the patient and client documents belonging to their records to Kela for storage. The obligation applies to electronic and paper documents. After this, the obligations of the controller are divided between Kela and the wellbeing services county or the City of Helsinki in whose area the service provider's domicile was located.
Learn more about archiving client and patient data after activities have ceased.
Support functions for carrying out the responsibilities of the controller will be built into the Patient Data Repository. In addition to disclosing data, a controller must be able to rectify or invalidate data. Therefore, changes to existing client and patient information systems are required.
Sharing of patient data with wellbeing applications
New interfaces for disclosing patient data to wellbeing applications will be published for production use in December 2024. With the help of the interfaces, patient data can be shown to citizens through wellbeing applications in addition to MyKanta. The wellbeing applications also include the dedicated digital services for managing affairs used by the wellbeing services counties and private social welfare and health care service operators.
Customers must enable the service and agree to the disclosure of their information in order to have their patient data included in an application or service. Wellbeing application suppliers must certify their applications.
Monitoring access to treatment: assessment of the need for treatment
The monitoring of access to treatment and assessment are currently under development. In primary and oral health care, it will be possible to monitor access to treatment on the basis of data stored in the Kanta Services. A unified Kanta data structure enables the smooth use of data in the treatment process.
In the first phase, a new document on the need for treatment will be implemented in the Patient Data Repository. This will allow for a consistent model for assessing and monitoring the need for treatment. The data structure of the document on the need for treatment will guide the work of the professional and support treatment planning.