Expertise Sought
- Researchers with experience in branches of science including: Medicine and Health Technology, Health Sciences, Welfare Sciences, Social Research, Administrative Studies, Information and Knowledge Management, and Information Technology
Research Project Idea
Health and social care clients’ welfare and equality in meeting their needs for services by aiming at reachability and accessibility of digitalized and non-digitalized healthcare and social welfare services
The aim of the research project idea is to build a knowledge base of reachability and accessibility of digitalized and non-digitalized social welfare and healthcare services using empirical and data-intensive research methods (for example, social and healthcare data, complaint data, questionnaires and interviews).
The societal target is to ensure clients’ welfare and equality in meeting their needs for services in the healthcare and social welfare systems in Finland and the United States.
According to the Finnish Health Care Act (1326/2010; Section 10), public healthcare and social welfare providers shall arrange the availability of services and universal access based on the clients’ needs. Clients of different ages have had problems with their health and social care services, which have been shown for example, by complaints. Queues for care have grown in many areas, and citizens of different ages of have addressed problems in access to care, weakening their health and wellbeing. Diverse data of social and healthcare organizations opens an opportunity to address problems and their solutions—with or without digitalization—for access to services offered by providers.
Research concerning access to care (for example, studies of patient complaints) has been conducted to some extent all over the world, such as in Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. Sanna Ryynänen's research broadens the scope to include both healthcare and social welfare services, in which various administrative and operational procedures and their related data and technology (including databases) can be used to analyze and implement organizational activity in wellbeing services. This strongly supports knowledge-based performance, decision making, and strategic development of organizations and society as a whole. Connecting different social and healthcare data has scarcely investigated in research of social welfare and healthcare services, and Ryynänen hopes to deepen research in this novel and meaningful research area.
Expertise and Background
Sanna Ryynänen has been a researcher in several research groups and teams at the University of Lapland. At the moment, she works as a researcher and project planner on three projects (ESR). They relate to work welfare in social and health care areas, education, and work safety in public organizations and enterprises. On these projects, she is a specialist from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Lapland.
ORCID ID 0000-0001-8392-7183, ResearchGate Sanna Ryynänen