Tallinn, Estonia
There has been so much going on from the last time I blogged! The next couple of posts will be dedicated to all the traveling that I’ve done this week! From Copenhagen, to Tallinn, to Helsinki, and Stockholm, I’ve been in awe the entire time as to how this is really my life!
This past week was long study tour. Long study tour is where the classroom is put to work. My core course focuses on different health care systems and how they operate in their respective countries. For our first stop in Estonia, we had the day to ourselves. Luckily for us, we arrived when they were having their Independence day! My class and I got to engage with residents and watch their parade. Walking through the city streets felt like stepping into a time machine. The heart of the city maintained its historical look from the 1800s. From the cobblestone (which is extremely unpleasant to walk on) to the colorful buildings, it felt like walking through a fairytale castle land.
Of course it wasn’t all fun and games. Each day we had academic visits we would go to that would assist us in better understanding health care in the country we were in. In Estonia every resident is issued a card that is their gateway into the healthcare world. With this card they can view their medical records themselves, views prescriptions issued by their doctor, and make appointments. what really blew me away about this was that this was all done electronically through a system called e-estonia. This online service was not only used for health care purposes, it was used for all aspects of life: renewing a driver’s license, voting, signing legal documents, paying tickets, etc. And the icing on top of the cake was that they have free WiFi in most public places so that these services can be accessible to all! It really blew my mind that such a small and fairly new country was able to digitize themselves to such an extent. One reason for this that our presenter pointed out is that many Estonians don’t like interacting with other people unless they have to (I’m not sure how true this is but it would make sense considering Estonians seemed very reserved when you first meet them).
It all seemed too good to be true, and I wondered why America hadn’t adopted a system like this that seemed to be so efficient. After much thinking, I realized that America had a lot of unresolved issues with providing care to citizens that digitizing health care could create even more barriers in access to care. Of the many of the things that I have learned in Europe that appear to be so common sense, are simply more complicated than they appear to be. Although Estonia has created an efficient system of interacting with health care, there are still issues of cardiovascular health and maternal health.
My favorite non-academic part of Estonia was visiting the PROTO Invention Factory! This factory was a museum of inventions, but rather than walking around looking and reading about inventions, you actually got to do them! Using virtual reality, people were able to make/use the inventions in their primitive stages. My professor and I built lamps together, but had to do so as they were moving on a conveyor belt. We had to work together as a team to build the lamps because I had some parts of the lamp that she didn’t and vice versa. Definitely the best museum experience I’ve ever had!
Finland you’re up next!
Adventures Abroad 