Exploring the health and welfare support system using digital technology: Focusing on the experiences of Finland and Denmark

This study analyzes the foreign experience of introducing digital welfare in Finland and Denmark in Scandinavia, which are leading efforts to utilize welfare technology in the public domain, among the Nordic countries that have already experienced the low fertility and aging situation from the 1960s. The author tried to explore the establishment of a health and welfare support system using technology. To this objective, the Danish government's five-year 'Growth Strategy for Digital Welfare' was examined in depth along with cases of public and private sector data integration platform construction in Finland. Finland has established the Kantar service since 2007, a centralized and integrated digital data system merging the social welfare data, electronic medical records (EMR), with genome data of its people all together. Then, in 2019, the revision of the Second Data Utilization Act to revitalize data utilization opened the way for private companies to use the integrated data for multiple purposes. In the case of Denmark, through a systematic e-government strategy for more than 10 years the foundation for digital public essential services has been laid. The main goals are the dissemination of telemedicine, effective cooperation in health care, and the application of welfare technologies and digital processes in the fields of nursing and care. In this study, after examining the cases of Finland and Denmark where the private and public sectors collaborate in terms of digitization in the social welfare and health care sectors, the author finally suggests key tasks we need to improve to create public interest through digitization.