The City of Helsinki Social Services and Health Care Division will be sending a text message to all persons scheduled for vaccination who are at risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms due to an illness or other medical condition. Persons between the ages of 65 and 69 are currently scheduled for vaccination.
A text message will also be sent to all those who are customers of the social and health care services for health-related reasons. The sender of the message is HKI SOTE. The aim is to send the text messages tomorrow on Tuesday.
“We have decided to test text messages as a means of notifying people of their turn to get vaccinated. The aim of the message is to indicate to the relevant people clearly whether or not they are scheduled for vaccination. When it is their time to get vaccinated, we will also send a text message to all others who belong to an at-risk group due to an illness,” says Medical Director of Health Stations Timo Lukkarinen.
The text message will be sent to approximately 4,800 people. However, the message will not reach all those scheduled for vaccination due to an illness as some are customers of occupational or specialised health care services. Furthermore, a telephone number is not registered for all persons who are customers of social and health care services for health-related reasons. For this reason, information on coronavirus vaccinations is also published in newspapers. To find out more about whether or not you belong to an at-risk group due to an illness, visit www.hel.fi/sote/koronarokotus-en.
The text message indicates that the recipient is, according to the information held by the Social Services and Health Care Division, scheduled for vaccination and should therefore read the appointment booking instructions at www.hel.fi/sote/koronarokotus-en. Recipients are also requested to make sure that they are scheduled for vaccination. The text message is sent in Finnish or Swedish, based on the native language of each recipient. Those whose native language is not Finnish or Swedish will receive the message in Finnish, Swedish and English.
The text message recipients have been picked based on the Health Benefit Analysis, which is a digital tool. The Analysis leverages data available in the patient information system as well as reasoning based on scientific evidence. The Health Benefit Analysis is used to assess the health of the population by dividing and filtering groups of people based on medical histories. The Health Benefit Analysis project is one of City of Helsinki’s key digital projects.