When you describe your symptoms in Treat, the doctor's assessment is often easier if they know which medicines you take and what has been found before. In Finland, that information lives in Kanta, the national health record service run by Kela, the Social Insurance Institution. In this post I explain how fetching Kanta records works in Treat, how the doctor's entries and prescriptions reach Kanta and the national Prescription Centre, and what you see in Omakanta.
What Kanta is and what it is not
Kanta is the national archive where patient records and electronic prescriptions from Finnish healthcare are stored. The Prescription Centre (Reseptikeskus) is the part of Kanta that pharmacies dispense from. Omakanta ("My Kanta") is your own view of the same records.
Kanta is not a subcontractor of Treat, and Treat is not part of Kanta. Kanta is a separate national register with its own legal basis. The professional making the assessment and Kela act as independent controllers for the data exchanged with your consent.
Records are fetched only with your explicit consent
Treat does not fetch your Kanta records automatically in the background. A fetch happens only when you give explicit consent (GDPR Art. 9(2)(a)), and only for the case you are being seen for.
I wanted consent to be verifiable afterwards, not just a tick in a box. So we record:
- the scope: which records the fetch covers, for example prescriptions or the documents you selected
- the text version: the exact wording you agreed to
- the timestamp: when consent was given
Fetched records are copied to the case temporarily so the doctor can see them while making the assessment. They are not kept beyond the retention period, and Treat does not build up a separate copy of your Kanta archive.
If you do not give consent, the doctor makes the assessment based on what you have told them and asks more if needed.
Who is responsible for the entries
The licensed doctor (or other professional registered with the Finnish Supervisory Agency, Lupa- ja valvontavirasto, formerly known as Valvira) making the assessment in Treat is the controller of the patient record. They are responsible for the entries: what is recorded about your case and what is decided. Treat Health Oy processes patient-record data on their behalf (GDPR Art. 28).
In practice, the doctor writes the summary, the decision and any prescription, and Treat delivers prescriptions, patient documents and the related structured data to Kanta on the professional's behalf, in line with the law and the consent you have given.
How a prescription reaches the pharmacy
When the doctor considers a prescription appropriate, it is written electronically and delivered to the national Prescription Centre. Two everyday things follow:
- You can collect the medicine from any pharmacy in Finland. At the pharmacy, proving your identity is enough.
- The prescription appears in Omakanta, like your other electronic prescriptions.
A Treat doctor can also renew a prescription when it is clinically justified. The cost of medicines is not included in the consultation price.
What you see in Omakanta
In Omakanta you see the prescriptions and record entries created through Treat once they have been archived in Kanta. In the same place you also manage Kanta's own consents and restrictions, which govern how your data is shared between healthcare providers.
The distinction is worth noting: the consent you give in Treat covers a fetch for one specific case, whereas your Omakanta settings govern Kanta's own disclosure of data. Both are in your hands.
Why we built it this way
Before Treat, I led architecture for Finland's certified patient-record systems and their Kanta integrations. One lesson is that a Kanta connection is not a standalone "integration"; it dictates how the data is built from the start: what is recorded, in what format and under whose responsibility.
In Treat, this shows in the fact that you as a patient need to know nothing about Kanta's structures. You describe your situation, decide for yourself whether your earlier records are fetched, and the doctor's decision and prescription end up where they are available to you and to the rest of healthcare. All of this happens in an environment located in Finland (Google Cloud, region europe-north1).
A fuller description of the processing is in our privacy policy: https://treat.health/privacy/