So we have a couple of things this morning. A little on digital life, and a holiday recap from our trip to Lapland.
First off:
I got this email this morning:
Dear SwissID user,
In your electronic patient record (EPR) you can file and manage important information about your health. As a patient, you’re always in control of which healthcare professionals get access to your patient record, such as your family doctor or pharmacist.
To open an EPR, a verified electronic identity must be provided for security reasons. Personal identification used to be the required method, but we now offer you a fully digital identification process* with SwissID. There’s no need to verify your identity in person. All you need is your smartphone and your identity card or passport.
Interested? Then visit our website, find your regional EPR provider and start the process.
As someone who is used to working with computers I do appreciate the benefits the digital age has brought. I also appreciate the bad things and the fear. The reality is that if you live in a modern western society all your medical records are already stored online. So we are all at risk to have that data released. The difference, at least to me, is that a program like this makes it more likely records will be released.
Basically it is a numbers game. Before the EPR, my records were in the Doctor’s Office, and the Insurance Company. I guess technically the records were not at the Insurance company, just a comprehensive list of every visit, treatment, and cost. So there were two entry points to get to my records. Now technically there will be thousands and thousands of entry points to get to my record. There will be a copy made of my record on the central data base, so literally ANY one that has access to the database is a potential weak spot.
I do see a benefit for a segment of the population. The benefit can be huge for those people that have a chronic illness that requires a specific treatment, or someone that has an allergy and a shot of penicillin could kill them. The ERP will make it much easier and faster for a new Doctor to find out relevant health information especially if there is an emergency situation. It should also allow there to be faster and better referrals, and consultations.
I do think the benefits outweigh the potential cost. This will make it easier to change doctors for one thing. Of course I also haven’t figured out the bad guys will benefit from knowing I have had Covid, I go in annually for a prostate exam, and even though I am almost 60 I have yet to have a colonoscopy! There, most of my deep dark medical secrets are out there for the world to see.
Note to the Swiss Government: If you are listening, I did find it very frustrating to try and get verified to see my EPR. The Swiss Aufenthaltstitel is not considered a Swiss ID; so then I had to try and use my passport. Even though the US Passports are now chipped, your system could not read the chip in the passport. I then got conflicting emails. One saying my verification could not go through, and then 15 minutes later an email saying my verification was completed. Other than that, the process was easy and painless until I tried to register my Doctor, and there is no such Doctor or practice on the list. Am I seeing a fraud?
For the second Tech part: I saw where the US House voted to outlaw TikTok in the US. I have to say I am kind of glad. I hope the bill goes through. I say that as a user of Tiktok. (Look for @hausmannlife )
I am not worried about the data privacy. There is no such thing as data privacy anyway. Even here in Switzerland where they follow the EU guidelines on privacy we truly do not have any online secrets. The only real difference here vs the US, is that it is harder for companies to sell my information so I don’t get nearly the same number of spam phone calls and text messages. We willingly give up all our privacy when we use any social media, shopping, or pretty much anything we do online.
My concern with TikTok is there is nothing to keep the Chinese Government from influencing what gets pushed to the eyeballs. It is bad enough that every social media and even search engine is designed to support our own biases. All of the algorithms keep sending us more of the information we WANT to see. If you like a viewpoint you are going to quickly only be shown information that supports that viewpoint. Tik Tok is able to take that one step further.
I am probably worried about nothing, and it is probably too late to be worried about it anyway. After all every social media site, and every search engine is more successful when they give us what we want to see rather than what we need to see. If I could change one thing about the world wide education system it would be to make online BS detection a requirement to graduate.
lapland
So our days in Lapland were designed to be 100% relaxation. We rented a glass house; so we could lay in bed at night and stare at the Northern Lights. We didn’t plan any hiking, or skiing, or anything could even be adjacent to effort! The only things we planned for the entire week were an afternoon with some reindeer, a snowmobile tour, and a 7 course dinner at the hotel that was prepared by a Michelin Starred Chef. I even went one step further, and rented Julie a place that had a private hot tub right out the door. The physical thing that Julie has missed the most from the US was a hot tub. Living in Wisconsin, the hot tub was sometimes challenging in the winter as I had to clear off the snow, but Julie loved it.
It was really a good thing that we had the hot tub. It helped to take the sting out of not being able to see the sky for 5 days. The entire time we spent in Finland we never saw the sky. There was no blue during the day, nor even a break in the clouds at night to see a glimpse of the lights. So that part of the trip was really heart breaking.
We did enjoy the reindeer farm. We got a ride in a sleigh pulled by a reindeer. We got to hand feed the reindeer, and we spent about two hours with one of the farm hands learning about reindeer. I found the discussion about reindeer fascinating. I will try and explain some of the highpoints.
The biggest surprise is that there are no wild reindeer in Finland. Maybe free range is a better term. Anyway, every reindeer is owned by someone. The reindeer are free range in the summer, and then every fall they are rounded up and trucked further south to farms. I was confused about the ownership parts, because there were no immediately obvious signs the reindeer were owned. I was looking for brands, or ear tags. Any visible sign that would show ownership. We learned they use ear marks for identification.
The image is an example of some of the marks. In reality there is a book that shows all of the different marks and who the owner is.
Next we learned that reindeer really stink. During the summer months we were told you can smell a herd of reindeer from up to a mile away. The reason they smell so badly is that they will hold in their waste until right before they are bedding down, and then will lay where they evacuated themselves. After a while the stench adds up. Our guide was telling us that he wears a gas mask when he goes to round up them up in the fall!
Did you know that Santa’s sleigh is NOT pulled by male reindeer? How do we know that? Well the bulls lose their antlers right around breeding season (October and November). The female reindeer do not lose their antlers until spring. So since all of Santa’s reindeer have antlers……
The reindeer in Finland are only partly raised for meat. Reindeer steaks are really good, though. I had Reindeer twice for dinner!! It turns out reindeer are more important for tourism than they are for food.
For all my deer hunting readers. There is no reindeer season, because there are no wild reindeer to hunt.
We really enjoyed our time. Maybe we will get back north again before our time here is over. We really want to see the Northern Lights in all their glory!
We don’t have a lot of pictures, but we really did enjoy our time in Finland. Many of the pictures are from the Snow Village Hotel. The owners use snow machines, and make giant piles of snow and hollow them out so people can spend a night. We used to do this Boy Scouts, but we didn’t add all the art work!
