Usable and accessible eHealth services for everyone / Käytettävät ja saavutettavat sähköiset terveyspalvelut kaikille

Heidi’s master’s thesis taught about the accessibility of the MyKanta mobile application

Heidi Mäkitalo completed her master’s thesis in Sari Kujala’s research group on the usability of the national mobile patient portal. The mobile application of the national patient portal, MyKanta, was released in 2025.

The usability of the mobile application was examined using survey data collected at the beginning of 2026, just before Heidi started her thesis. Heidi found it interesting to be able to study the responses on such an engaging topic straight away. "The number of responses was really excellent, and the data contained a variety of experiences. I was able to go through patients’ written experiences myself and try to find the common thread in them," she describes.

Heidi had previous experience of qualitative analysis and the ATLAS.ti software from working as a research assistant, but not with such an extensive dataset. The earlier dataset also consisted of workshop and interview data. "The survey responses were really different, so it was quite a fun change from the previous one," Heidi reflects.

Doing the master’s thesis gave her confidence and better skills to carry out qualitative analysis in the future as well. Heidi also felt that she is now better able to estimate how long an analysis may take. In addition, she believes she has improved in recognizing themes and dares to give more time at the beginning to form an overview of the data.

The dataset also included quantitative data. Heidi was not so familiar to statistical analysis beforehand, so she was able to learn a lot about it. There had also been less statistical analysis than qualitative methods in her studies. Through her master’s thesis she also gained a better understanding of how usability is studied by combining qualitative and quantitative data and thus creating an overall picture.

Doing the master’s thesis in a research group provided support throughout the work. Heidi had hoped to find a master’s thesis position related to accessibility. She contacted Sari Kujala, who had researched the topic, directly by email, and it so happened that a call for applications on a suitable topic was about to open.

Heidi also felt it was great that she had originally found the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) major. She first heard about it from her friend and started to investigate it further. It can be chosen as a major not only in Computer Science but also in the Electrical Engineering program, where Heidi began her studies. In addition to usability, accessibility had also come up right at the beginning of the HCI studies. Accessibility and its many forms were a new perspective for Heidi, which sparked her interest. It also felt like a meaningful and versatile subject. Heidi hopes that in the future she will be able to work with accessibility as well.

Through accessibility, perspectives on usability have also broadened. ‘I do see usability perhaps in a different light nowadays. There is a lot in common between accessibility and usability, so I may also see more broadly what kinds of opportunities different jobs and different topics offer to bring out that accessibility perspective,’ Heidi describes. ‘Somehow, I understand it as a kind of fundamental issue for all users. I don’t even know if usability can really be separated from accessibility,’ she continues to reflect.

In Heidi’s view, the HCI perspective could be used more in the design of physical devices familiar from electrical engineering. That could also interest her in the future. She recommends the HCI major to anyone interested in a human-centered perspective on technology and in understanding its different approaches. ‘It really is a very diverse field,’ Heidi sums up.