KANSANELAKELAITOS (Kela), the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, provides social security coverage for Finnish residents and many Finns living abroad through the different stages of their lives. Among the social security benefits offered by Kela are family benefits, health insurance, rehabilitation, basic unemployment security, basic social assistance, housing benefits, financial aid for students, disability benefits and basic pensions. Kela operates under the supervision of Parliament.
Kela produces digital Kanta services for the social welfare and healthcare sector. Kanta is the national backbone of Finnish eHealth services. Among other Kanta services, Kela produces Prescription Service, Pharmaceutical Database, Patient Data Repository, My Kanta pages (patient portal), Kelain (web-based prescription portal for healthcare professionals) and the eHDSI National Contact Point for eHealth. All prescriptions in Finland are issued and dispensed via the Kanta services. Pharmaceutical Database contains necessary information about medicines, their price and reimbursement status in terms of issuing and dispensing, and about interchangeable medicines. The information in the Pharmaceutical Database is compiled from various sources. The information about medicines is based on information in the medicinal product registry of the Finnish Medicines Agency Fimea. The Pharmaceuticals Pricing Board (Hila) and Kela produce information related to, e.g. the reimbursability of medicines. The Pharmaceutical Database acts as medicinal data master database for the Finnish eHealth and healthcare and pharmacies.
Kela develops and maintains technical requirements and specifications related to the use of Kanta Services, which are used for implementing interoperability between electronic health record systems and pharmacy systems.
