Ostrobothnia Digital Clinic Experiment

NCT06904469 | Active Not Recruiting

• 1 other identifier: THL/5935/6.02.01/2024
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 170,306
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

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.

Conditions

Primary Care Provider

Keywords

digital healthcare; telemedicine; digital clinic; primary care; healthcare utilization; randomized controlled trial

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• 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.

  From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months

Secondary Outcomes (2)

• The number of other contacts with traditional public primary care (Y1.2)

  From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months

• The number of public digital clinic contacts (D.1).

  From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months

Other Outcomes (2)

• The total number of public primary care contacts (Y1.3)

  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).

  From the digital clinic launch to the end of treatment at 9 months

Study Arms (2)

Access to a digital clinic

EXPERIMENTAL

Access to a digital clinic, which offers assessments, diagnoses, follow-up care recommendations, and prescriptions

Other: Access to a digital clinic

No access to a digital clinic (treatment as usual)

NO INTERVENTION

Health care as usual without access rights to a digital clinic

Interventions

Access to a digital clinic OTHER

This intervention grants access to a digital clinic that provides chat-based primary care consultations via phone application and website.

Access to a digital clinic

Eligibility Criteria

• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• All residents alive and residing in the region of Ostrobothnia (Finland) on March 14, 2015, AND permanent address observed in the Finnish Population Information System

You may not qualify if:

• Resides in the city of Kristiinankaupunki OR resides in a household defined as institutionalized care
• If an individual from the target population, extracted from the Population Information System, is not observed in Statistics Finland datasets, which is defined as not having a municipality of residence (missing data) at the end of 2024, the investigators will not use that individual in the study population in the analyses because the data do not include have covariates for the individual.
• Age 71 and above

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare: lead
• Aalto University: collaborator
• University of Turku: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Wellbeing Services County of Ostrobothnia

Vaasa, Finland

Location

Related Links

• Replication codes (GitHub)
• Pre-analysis plan as of March 28, 2025

Study Officials

• Mika T Kortelainen, PhD

  University of Turku and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

  STUDY DIRECTOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER GOV
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Principal investigator

Model Details: Cluster-randomized controlled trials, households as clusters

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: March 18, 2025
• First Posted: April 1, 2025
• Study Start: April 15, 2025
• Primary Completion: January 14, 2026
• Study Completion: January 14, 2026
• Last Updated: August 20, 2025

Record last verified: 2025-03

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

FI (1)