Ostrobothnia Digital Clinic Experiment

Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

Status

Active, not recruiting

Conditions

Primary Care Provider

Treatments

Other: Access to a digital clinic

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT06904469

THL/5935/6.02.01/2024

Details and patient eligibility

About

This randomized controlled trial (RCT) examines the impacts of a publicly provided digital clinic that offers digital primary care services to consumers. This intervention grants access to a public digital clinic that provides chat-based primary care consultations via a mobile phone application and website, including care needs assessment, diagnoses, follow-up care recommendations, and prescriptions. The digital clinic supplements traditional public primary care services, including in-person visits and phone consultations. The trial takes place in Ostrobothnia, Finland, a healthcare district serving a population of 178,000 residents. The investigators will randomize access to the digital clinic at the household level, providing access to 50% of the households. By doing so, the investigators aim to evaluate whether digital services can substitute for, complement, or increase the utilization of traditional primary care, particularly in-person visits or calls to traditional clinics. At the end of the nine-month trial, access to the digital clinic will be expanded to the entire population.

Enrollment

170,306 estimated patients

Sex

All

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria for the intervention:

All residents alive and residing in the region of Ostrobothnia (Finland) on March 14, 2015, AND permanent address observed in the Finnish Population Information System

Exclusion Criteria for the intervention:

Resides in the city of Kristiinankaupunki OR resides in a household defined as institutionalized care

Exclusion Criteria for the analysis sample:

The inclusion and exclusion criteria mentioned above AND:
If an individual from the target population, extracted from the Population Information System, is not observed in Statistics Finland datasets, which is defined as not having a municipality of residence (missing data) at the end of 2024, the investigators will not use that individual in the study population in the analyses because the data do not include have covariates for the individual.
Age 71 and above