People need to stop hating on fax. Hospitals still use fax because it is a much more punishable crime to tap phone lines which requires physical access, as opposed to a server that could be infected from a hacker halfway across the world.
- It's direct point to point communication (over a network)
- The transport network is dedicated and not open to anyone and covered by quite strong laws in many countries
- It's easy to see the history of communications
- It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something
- It's relatively standardized and ubiquitous ( in health )
Email would be the closest thing, but it doesn't have all the advantages, and the extra add ons that would make it better (like encryption, delivery receipt, digital signatures) are not standardized and/or ubiquitous ( and often hotly argued about )
So fax is the lowest common denominator, that, if it was proposed today, would not be accepted for many of its disadvantages, but it's now hard to find a way to replace it.
I think this is a biggie. It means your workflow doesn't need to include going back later and checking to see if your document was received, and then trying to send it some different way. You don't have to guess which way the recipient is capable of receiving a message.
It's the original e-mail. ;-)
is it? what if the hospital is using a VOIP solution?
Many fax machine can be programmed over the wire, so maybe you have default pins and now your faxes are being forwarded and you don't know.
This was not the case when I worked in healthcare. It was a constant back and fourth of "did you receive it?" over the phone.
And you basically file a police report, hardly anyone cares, and you are left with a bunch of paperwork to go fix it yourself. You get the money back eventually with plenty of paperwork.
At which point do thieves committing all sorts of punishable crimes actually get punished? In my case, the person signed up for a line of credit at Lowes, purchased 20k of construction goods, presumable all in a videotaped store and got off scott free.
https://research.checkpoint.com/sending-fax-back-to-the-dark...
Also, fax machines are very often just as internet connected as anything else. Email to fax, fax to email, fax-over-IP, it's not just modems dialing each other on copper anymore.
Punishable, sure, but that's CYA thinking. It's less secure, because there's no way to encrypt fax like you can encrypt email. Punishment doesn't help anyone except the CEOs, unless, of course, it was the CEO's information that got leaked.
Also, yes, phone calls are sent over the Internet just like emails. The big difference is, yes, that phone audio isn't encrypted.
People mess around with just about anything they can get their hands on- so what if the nurses send messages to each other and have fun? I'd be willing to give the people who take care of me a ream of paper if it meant they were in a good mood.