Digitalization of the Medical System and Demographic Processes in Estonia

Abstract

The rapid growth in information technologies has produced effects for all the walks of human and public life. The health care sector did not stay out, although it needs to be acknowledged that it has not been effectively digitalized in all the countries, even developed ones. It should be emphasized that the demographic situation heavily depends on the health care system performance. A most advanced country in terms of the health care digitalization is certainly Estonia. This country with less than 1,500,000 of population has long digitalized all the services provided to its residents. 
 The article’s objective is to investigate the impact of health care system digitalization on demographic processes in Estonia. Some innovations in the Estonian medial system, implemented with the advent of new information technologies, are discussed: for doctors it is possible to exchange paperless information about a patient in the patient’s presence in case of need (including medical records or results of tests and examinations). On the other hand, such confidential information can be closed by the patient’s desire for any medical employee. Moreover, a person is well aware of who exactly has access to his/her data: doctor, police or an official body. 
 Being a digital country, Estonia was better prepared to deal online with various problems (first and foremost, distance training, distance job and medical service: testing, identifying contacts with ill persons and vaccination later on) posed by the pandemic of COVID-19. However, a change in the demographic situation, resulting from the spread of the virus, was triggered e. g. by the health care system performance and its response on the new challenge.
 It is emphasized that important information sources for investigating the demographic situation in Estonia and the health care system’s impact on demographic change include the statistical office and other official bodies, as well as international institutions. Using information on the pandemic extracted from online registers, researchers, medics, statisticians and professionals in other fields could help heath care system in quicker adaptation to new realities and in implementing additional methods for analysis of the morbidity rate in Estonia. 
 The experience of the Estonian health care system in implementing digitalization is undoubtedly important for Ukraine. It refers to creating new registers and systems already used in Estonia and other North European countries but lacking in Ukraine, and to improving existing medical information systems and their interactions.