An interventional study of Access to a digital clinic in Primary Care Provider, sponsored by Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. Active, not recruiting at 1 site in Finland. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2025-08-20.
Sponsored by Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare · Not applicable, Interventional, and Health services research
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.
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare is the lead sponsor of 42 studies on the registry; 3 are open to participants now.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
Inclusion Criteria for the intervention:
Exclusion Criteria for the intervention:
Exclusion Criteria for the analysis sample:
Access to a digital clinic, which offers assessments, diagnoses, follow-up care recommendations, and prescriptions
Other: Access to a digital clinic
Health care as usual without access rights to a digital clinic
This intervention grants access to a digital clinic that provides chat-based primary care consultations via phone application and website.
The number of in-person visits in public primary care (Y1.1)
This outcome includes in-person visits to nurses and physicians in traditional public primary care clinics.
Time frame: From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months
The number of other contacts with traditional public primary care (Y1.2)
This outcome includes care needs assessments, remote appointments to nurses and physicians, and professional-to-professional interactions between nurses and physicians in traditional public primary care clinics.
Time frame: From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months
The number of public digital clinic contacts (D.1).
This outcome includes care needs assessments, remote appointments to nurses and physicians (via chat and video), and professional-to-professional interactions between nurses and physicians in digital public primary care clinics.
Time frame: From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months
The total number of public primary care contacts (Y1.3)
This outcome includes in-person visits to nurses and physicians, care needs assessments, remote appointments to nurses and physicians, and professional-to-professional interactions between nurses and physicians in digital and traditional public primary care clinics.
Time frame: From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months
Presence or absence of public digital clinic contacts during the follow-up (yes/no) (D.2).
This outcome includes care needs assessments, remote appointments to nurses and physicians (via chat and video), and professional-to-professional interactions between nurses and physicians in digital public primary care clinics. This outcome is 1 if the person has at least one contact with the public digital clinic during follow-up and 0 if the person has no contact during follow-up.
Time frame: From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months
Plan to share: No — The dataset containing individual-level health data and demographic data is regulated under the Act on the Secondary Use of Health and Social Data (552/2019) and cannot be made readily available for the purpose of direct replication. However, access to the data can be obtained by sending requests to the Finnish Social and Health Data Permit Authority, Findata, and to Statistics Finland. The investigators commit to publishing all statistical code and other details of the computations that are sufficient to permit the validation of empirical work. The investigators commit to storing the treatment assignment code and data for future use, allowing interested researchers to construct the full dataset required for further research utilizing the original treatment assignment.
Started Apr 2025 (actual). Primary completion is estimated for Jan 2026, 8 months after the start.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
This study is active, not recruiting, as verified in Mar 2025. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare