New ways of working

Pihlajalinna builds for the future with Visiba Triage

Åsa Söderlund

<span id="hs_cos_wrapper_name" class="hs_cos_wrapper hs_cos_wrapper_meta_field hs_cos_wrapper_type_text" style="" data-hs-cos-general-type="meta_field" data-hs-cos-type="text" >Pihlajalinna builds for the future with Visiba Triage</span>

Pihlajalinna has transformed how they receive patients in occupational and public health care services using the AI-enabled triage solution Visiba Triage. The new way of working shows promising results in efficiency gains when handling new requests.

Pihlajalinna is one of Finland's leading providers of social and healthcare services, operating in private clinics, hospitals, and housing services across Finland. They aim to build services that focus on keeping people healthy, and 40% of their visits are remote consultations, most of which are handled by their e-health unit.

The e-health unit had been working with a digital front door, and digital care flows in Visiba Care for some time when Philajalinna started to look at digital triage. The nationally procured solution, OmaOlo, was the standard choice, but Philajalinna needed something more sophisticated to meet their local needs and turned to Visiba.

Careful implementation

After piloting Visiba Triage in 2022, they found the solution safe and valuable enough to scale up in occupational and public healthcare services in 2023. In the spring of 2024, they evaluated the implementation based on 50,000 completed triage sessions. What they were looking for were indicators of greater efficiency and possibilities to automate routine work, freeing up time to deliver more and better care.

The effects of using Visiba Triage

The most significant effect of implementing Visiba Triage, according to Pihlajalinna, is the much shorter time triage nurses spend in the chat with patients, compared to when they were using an ordinary chat tool. Visiba Triage helps them to streamline the medical assessment by suggesting differential diagnoses and urgency and presenting a summary to the healthcare professional, who is then very well-informed when picking up the case.

Most referred to book online

Once the case has been grouped according to Visiba Triage's urgency and diagnosis suggestions, it is reviewed by a triage nurse. Most patients are then invited to book an online appointment. For the patient, the first interaction is the automated chat, the second is a short chat with a nurse, the third is an automated message with a link to the correct booking calendar, and the fourth is a physical or digital meeting with the appropriate professional.

Clinicians in the loop

Pihlajalinna believes that it would be safe to let Visiba Triage refer the patient directly to a digital meeting with the right professional or to book a physical appointment, bypassing the triage nurse in many cases. But for now, they like to keep a clinician in the loop to follow the agreements with their different clients and to build trust in the system amongst the professionals using it.

The patient experience

Patients seem happy with their interaction with Visiba Triage, which they perceive as a chatbot asking them questions about their condition. In the feedback form provided at the end of the chat, they rate the chat experience on average 4.5 out of 5.

Philajalinna is also pleased with the patient interface.  Referring to the chat's start-to-finish conversion rate, Kaisa Kujansivu, CMO at Pihlajalinna, says:

"It seems easy enough and quick enough to finish the questions."

The healthcare professionals' experience

Pihlajalinna say that the feedback from professionals is also positive, and Kaisa tells us that it is easier to get the clinicians' buy-in when they still always have personal contact with the patient and when they realise that Visiba Triage can make their job easier. 

"They can see for themselves that the suggestions from the tool are quite accurate, and that increases trust."

The clinicians at Philajalinna agree with one of Visiba Triage's suggested differential diagnoses in 95 % of the cases, which Kaisa seems happy with. "We probably disagree more with each other", she says.

Building for the future

In summary, Pihlajalinna's experience with Visiba Triage so far has shown promising results in efficiency gains and they have been satisfied with the tool. By piloting and scaling up slowly and carefully monitoring staff performance and feedback, they are building the organisations' confidence in the new way of working.

Commenting on the cooperation between the Finish healthcare provider and the Swedish healthtech company, Nina-Maria Tigerstedt, who is responsible for Pihlajalinna's remote medical services, says

"We see this as a long-term investment. The triage tool has the potential to help us in our mission to give our patients top-quality care wherever they are, always, by helping us to refer them to the appropriate level of care efficiently"

Visiba Group AB
Adolf Edelsvärds Gata 11 Göteborg, 414 51
Phone: 0761993666