The Fax is Not Yet Obsolete (theatlantic.com) 163
Fax, once at the forefront of communications technologies but now in deep decline, has persisted in many industries. From a report: Law-enforcement agencies remain heavily reliant on fax for routine operations, such as bail postings and return of public-records requests. Health care, too, runs largely on fax. Despite attempts to replace it, a mix of regulatory confusion, digital-security concerns, and stubbornness has kept fax machines droning around the world.
An early facsimile message was sent over telegraph lines in London in 1847, based on a design by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bain. There is some dispute over whether it was the first fax: Competing inventors, including Bain in the United Kingdom and Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell across the Atlantic, sought to father facsimile technology, which was a kind of white whale for inventors. Telegraphs already allowed messages to be passed across distances, one letter at a time using Morse code. But the dream of transmitting copies of messages and images instantly over wires was very much alive.
Writing in 1863, Jules Verne imagined that the Paris of the 1960s would be replete with fax machines, or as he called them, "picture-telegraphs." The technology did eventually lead to a revolution in communication, though it didn't happen until years later. It first became known to many Americans after the 1939 New York World's Fair, where a fax machine transmitted newspaper images from around the world at a rate of 18 minutes per page -- lightning speed for the time. Further reading: 'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter.
An early facsimile message was sent over telegraph lines in London in 1847, based on a design by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bain. There is some dispute over whether it was the first fax: Competing inventors, including Bain in the United Kingdom and Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell across the Atlantic, sought to father facsimile technology, which was a kind of white whale for inventors. Telegraphs already allowed messages to be passed across distances, one letter at a time using Morse code. But the dream of transmitting copies of messages and images instantly over wires was very much alive.
Writing in 1863, Jules Verne imagined that the Paris of the 1960s would be replete with fax machines, or as he called them, "picture-telegraphs." The technology did eventually lead to a revolution in communication, though it didn't happen until years later. It first became known to many Americans after the 1939 New York World's Fair, where a fax machine transmitted newspaper images from around the world at a rate of 18 minutes per page -- lightning speed for the time. Further reading: 'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter.
Simplicity (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot beat the simplicity of a fax machine. You put in a piece of paper, enter someone's phone number, and it just WORKS. Yeah, you could in theory say the same about email, but think about how complicated it gets to attempt to scan an image, and then get that image into an email attachment? Everyone here on /. probably knows how, but honestly sit down and attempt to write up the steps for someone who isn't a hard-core techie that just needs to get the job done. Too much tech is getting in the way of the actual jobs at hand.
Re: Simplicity (Score:1)
Complicated to scan and email? Seriously? What idiot millennial world are you living in? There are goddamn iPhone and android apps for that, but if you work at an even remotely decent place, your fucking printers will do it for you.
Holy shit.
Complicated, he says.
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That it's not complicated to scan a document and attach it to an email.
No it's not complicated, but it's *more* complicated than using sending a fax.
Fictional, but representative statement from people I have worked with that regularly use faxes:
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I just turned 50. I have no clue how to send a fax. I've never gotten one to come out right. Either the paper jams or it came out unreadable.
No thanks - I'll take e-mail any day over fax.
If most places are anything like my work, most faxes are just server to server these days. Our main application uses fax, and perhaps a document has to be scanned in or it's generated by the application, then you click the document, you click the destination and click send. Fax servers use encrypted tunnels to communicate with configured destinations. One thing that the fax "protocol" has over email, is receipt of arrival showing that not only did you send it but they successfully received it. Our main admi
Re: Simplicity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Funny thing is my printer has web services right on the control panel. Scanning to Dropbox, or Google Drive (among others) is a scan and send. Really the modern printer (especially business class) is pretty capable.
Re: Simplicity (Score:2)
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think about how complicated it gets to attempt to scan an image, and then get that image into an email attachment?
Many professions that still use faxes receive documents and images by email or download, print them out on paper, and then feed the paper into a fax machine.
Simplicity: iFax (Score:2)
That would be T.37 or iFax, and a lot of printers come with software that makes the whole process pretty easy.
Re: Simplicity: iFax (Score:2, Interesting)
I developed a hybrid fax system at my voip company using freeswitch.
Basically you can send and receive faxes via e-mail or fax machine, or both.
Using a simple SIP based analog gateway attached to the fax machine we can send and receive faxes via fax machines.
But you can also send and receive faxes by email. To send you send it to (10-digit-number)@fax.myvoipcompanyname.com and it sends it.
We use a simple authentication list to match outbound faxes to customers by their sending email address, that we verify
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I don't know how, to do it easily. I can scan a document at work, but the same scanner is also a fax machine, so why not fax? Our HR was in a different city, because we got city business by promising to have an office there. But to communicate some stuff to HR they wanted a fax... Maybe phones can do it, but hard to tell what with all the ads getting in my way.
Now receiving faxes, that's complicated. All those outgoing fax machines I see don't seem to have easily discoverable phone numbers. Whereas re
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so why not fax?
Because it ties up a phone line for minutes per page. And given the dearth of land lines, the one I have left has better uses.
If I scan it and send it off attached to an e-mail, that happens in the background on decent broadband. It doesn't even interfere with my VoIP 'land line'. Attach a read receipt and it's pretty robust as well.
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Because it ties up a phone line for minutes per page. And given the dearth of land lines, the one I have left has better uses.
Unless you or the receiver has a horrible quality POTS line, or a 1980's fax machine, it will not take "minutes per page". More like 5 to 25 seconds per page, depending on content and resolution.
Re: Simplicity (Score:2)
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Everyone here on /. probably knows how, but honestly sit down and attempt to write up the steps for someone who isn't a hard-core techie that just needs to get the job done. Too much tech is getting in the way of the actual jobs at hand.
What are you smoking?
* Open camera app (in some phones, this is as simple as: "twist the phone").
* Take photo.
* View photo (in some phones, this is as simple as "click the icon in the bottom right of the camera app").
* Share the photo to your email program (in most phones, this is as simple as "click the share icon while viewing the photo").
* Fill out the rest of the email and hit send.
This is significantly easier than faxing.
Re:Simplicity (Score:5, Informative)
You cannot beat the simplicity of a fax machine. You put in a piece of paper, enter someone's phone number, and it just WORKS.
Not in my experience it didn't. Fax spammers were a major PITA when we used to have a fax machine at work.
It got stupid in the end, missing out on important faxes because they'd used up all the paper over the weekend.
Just as bad, the morons who couldn't use a fax machine, put their document in the wrong way around and sent us a bunch of blank pages.
Or the idiots who don't check what number they're faxing, so you answer the office phone to bunch of squeals...often half a dozen times until they either give up or finally get the right number.
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How is the scanner for the email more complicated than the scanner for the fax? Would it not be the exact same technology?
Call Northside 777 (Score:1)
For an interesting look at the 1948 state of the art of transmitting photographic images by wire, see the based-on-true-story suspense movie Call Northside 777 starring Jimmy Stewart. A major plot element involves this technique. It was a rather involved processs, slow, and not at all simple.
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Bzzt. Fail. SNR (and hence, dynamic range) of CD is always 96 dB; the master may be noisy, and the DAC may be noisy, but the medium itself is 96 dB (about 6 dB per bit). Likewise bandwidth is always 22.05 kHz (thanks to Nyquist and Fourier and a bunch of others). The master may be limited, the speakers or amps or DAC may be limited, but the medium itself is good for just a bit more than 22 kHz. And cross-talk? Essentially infinite on CD, but on a record you're lucky to do better than 30 dB channel se
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> SNR (and hence, dynamic range) of CD is always 96 dB
I do believe that you've inverted your model. The dynamic range of digital signals from a CD, from one bit to 16 bit signals, is 96 dB. Signal to noise is often far less, because the processing signal fed to the system often has more than one dB of noise and because of signal filtering, which tends to smooth out low amplitude signals accompanied by high amplitude signals.
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Did it use the machines that you rolled the paper around a tube, then the two ends had to synchronize spinning - then as one end had a head scan the source paper, the receiving end would use a pen to draw on the destination paper?
I remember using one of these in the Army a while back. I'm having no luck finding an example of one on google.
The Fax is Not Yet Completely Replaced (Score:3)
There really isn't a good replacement in its niche (Score:1)
The thing is, fax is a very useful vehicle to get your message across. It works and doesn't come with troubles like receiver doesn't show the html "right", which doesn't belong in an email anyway, the file you sent as an attachment cannot be read for this or that reason, like getting scrubbed by antivirus or simply not having a specific application installed, or the email you clicked on is "wrong" and now has taken over your computer. Oh and it doesn't require expensive data bundles but works on a normal un
Still used in Education (Elementary Level) (Score:3)
I volunteer at a K-8 school and we just installed a new phone system. The system uses VOIP, with the hardware running on a virtual machine. However, I am running a phone wire (Cat-3 actually) to the office for the fax machine so we can bypass the old wiring which is a mess using 66 blocks. Educational records are still transmitted by fax.
...and still Obsolete (Score:2)
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Imperial units are not obsolete because they do something that metric units don't do, they trivially divide into thirds. That's a major benefit of a twelve-inch foot and a three-foot yard, but the same effect occurs with the other imperial units. That's why they still use some of them even in the UK, where they mostly use metric.
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VOIP systems can provide enough signal to run a fax/modem. No component of the system has to include real paper today, except perhaps a document scanner. Even signatures are being done with a touch screen and a stylus.
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I have worked at a High School in Canada and can confirm that transcribing data from a printed out word document into another word document is alive and well in our education system.
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Some crook in a basement in Uzbekistan can't really easily hack the fax circuit.
Since most telephony is now over IP; Yes, they can.
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How many analog lines are analog past the central office? None, I'd guess. In fact, not many are analog more than a few hundred yards down the road to a neighborhood interface cabinet.
Disco and Fax. (Score:2)
Problem is that people think Faxing hasn't adapted.*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
My printer can do both, as well as traditional POTS.
*Heck I remember when HylaFax was a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Even used something like it when NeXTStep was still going strong.
Still very much in use in Japan (Score:4)
Fax is very much alive in Japan. We use it often for the stupidest shit you think we'd be doing by email now...
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Thanks. I'm now seeing the image of a middle-aged overweight Japanese man riffling through a pad of paper while his colleagues look on in amusement.
Millennials (Score:2)
Yeh right (Score:4, Informative)
In the last five years I've moved from Australia to the USA and then to the UK, and now back to Australia. In all countries I have set up businesses, filed taxes for myself and the businesses, corresponded with the various government departments required to do all that stuff. I have had health care and gone to the doctors.
I had to send three faxes in this five year period - all to companies/organisations in the USA. Each time I had to do it (many months apart) I marvelled at what a weird anachronism it seemed to be, and asked various friends & family in other parts of the world if faxing was something they had to do very often (usually after me asking them if they had a way for me to send a fax, which they didn't), and they seemed equally surprised.
I can't remember the last time I sent a fax in Australia; easily more than 10 years ago.
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The house I was in this weekend had a VCR. The owner is 80 years old. I present fluffernutter evidence that the VCR is infact not obsolete and those people with those fancy new DVD things are just doing it wrong.
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I could not. Therefore as you just said the VCR is in fact not obsolete.
I'm very frightened for the people you need to communicate with if you abuse the english language like this.
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So if fax is so obsolete, why didn't you just send them in a digital way to those three companies instead and let the chips fall where they may?
Government departments do not negotiate when it comes to paperwork, as a general rule :D
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Not yet extinct (Score:3)
Correction: the fax is not yet extinct. It is certainly obsolete.
Yes, I know... (Score:2)
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My wife and I are currently fighting a denied health insurance claim. The reason it was denied was that the insurance company sent a fax to the wrong phone number at the hospital, and didn't check for a confirmation. Some companies are barely in the 1990's technology-wise.
Not really a tech issue. Either they sent it to a regular phone, in which case their fax machine told them it did not succeed in sending the fax, or they sent it to the wrong fax machine. Better than email, as with fax, you get back a confirmation they received the message or not before it finishes.
You left out... (Score:2)
Law-enforcement agencies remain heavily reliant on fax for routine operations, such as bail postings and return of public-records requests. Health care, too, runs largely on fax.
You left out higher education.
We're adding an addition to our high school, which includes a new office for the careers counselor. I consulted with the architects on the low-voltage wiring. When we ran it by the counselor for approval, she asked me, "Where's the fax line?" I looked at her dumbfounded, wondering why she couldn't ju
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>"In the age of secure upload, I couldn't believe it, but she said that only one college she works with regularly uses 100% secure-upload, while everyone else is 100% fax."
That is because there is a single fax standard. And it works. However, there is no single secure, standard, and easy way to send electronic documents without faxing. It sucks too. This is why healthcare stuff is almost always US mailed or faxed.
The closest one can come, it seems, it to scan to an encrypted PDF and then Email it as
Case law rules (Score:1)
In many jurisdictions, a fax has a long case law history of being considered as good and legal as paper (usually when confirmed in person or verbally). That is why faxes continue to exist. Yes, digital signatures might be better in some cases, but faxes will continue to rule until there is an agreed upon deployment of an alternative that is considered equally non-repudiable.
Plausible Deniablility (Score:1)
Scott Adam's Dilbert strip on this:
https://dilbert.com/strip/1992-12-21
It is always hilarious that the most illegible, easily manipulated transmission vector is the gold standard for authenticity. Photoshop away, print it out, and FAX it to someone and it is valid.
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Scott Adam's Dilbert strip on this:
https://dilbert.com/strip/1992... [dilbert.com]
It is always hilarious that the most illegible, easily manipulated transmission vector is the gold standard for authenticity. Photoshop away, print it out, and FAX it to someone and it is valid.
*sigh*
A Photoshopped document, whether uploaded to Imgur, e-mailed, faxed, mailed, or sent via carrier pigeon, is still the same document. If there is a signature on it, then the signature is still binding to whatever the photoshopped document says, unless the contents of the document itself are in dispute. I don't see how that applies uniquely to faxes.
Fax is considered a secure method of transmission for a number of reasons. First, in a court case, theoretically each side has their copy of the document, w
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Some VoIP providers have FAX capability as part of their package. SMS even.
Let’s rephrase this (Score:2)
More properly, an industry that still uses fax is doing things the old, inefficient way because it can’t be bothered to change. From legal protocols that use low-security handwritten signatures rather than PGP to stubborn old bastards in the medical world who won’t digitize, the fax users are a cavalcade of obsolescence.
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I can tell you for a FACT they are still big! (Score:2)
as tech support (Score:1)
Fax facts... (Score:2)
The revolution in Fax was getting TODAY.
Fax's irreplaceable undeniable delivery produces physical documents that someone must handle.
Fax is the only medium that guarantees delivery AND that someone will see it.
Those attributes remain its most significant. For government whether battle plans delivered to the field, signatories or legal its remains admissible evidence. For business it is simple, cheap and ubiquitous communications. For politics piles of fax can be measured, categorized and vouchers.f
the fax is obsolete (Score:2)
and so are processes in place that still require a fax to be used.
Q: Can you send me the form, filled in, by fax?
A: No, i can't because of where i live
Q: Really, where do you live?
A: in the 21st century.
Also, books, paper, telephone, radio (Score:2)
There are lots of technologies that have been superseded by newer technologies. But very often, the newer technologies don't cover well certain specific use cases.
Pagers are still in use in some locations, like hospital basements, where cell towers don't reach. The printing press is still better at printing very large numbers of copies, than computer printers. Paper is still easier to hand out at a lecture or meeting.
Faxes are not regularly hacked, making them more secure for the medical and legal industrie
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Here is a list of who still uses faxes:
1. Governments
2. Lawyers, insurance companies, and others that have to interact with governments.
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Doctors of all kinds, service workers of all kinds, lots of people still use faxes you idiot lol. Why do you just assert things and expect that to "make it true" anyway? This is a pattern of yours Bill.
Re:Facsimile. (Score:4, Interesting)
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>How many of those doctors, service workers, and others are required by law or regulation to use FAXes?
Due to HIPAA, fax remains very important in the healthcare field. It is considered a "secure" transport/channel, just like the US mail. Meanwhile, Email is not considered "secure", unless it and/or the attachments are encrypted (and with no PHI in the subject or unencrypted body). And there is no "good" (good = easy, quick, standardized, compatible, universal) standard for Email encryption, unfortuna
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Faxing is annoying and slow. But it "just works."
Except when faxes get sent to the wrong place [bbc.com] or get hacked [wired.com]
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>"Except when faxes get sent to the wrong place [bbc.com]" or get hacked [wired.com]"
Indeed. But that also happens with:
1) Phone calls
2) US Mail
3) UPS/Fedex
4) Email
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>"An E-mail getting sent to the wrong place is useless to the recipient if it's encrypted, you simpleton."
Wow, I could never have figured that out without your obvious and hostile/rude comment.
They don't know about the ESIGN Act, 2000 (Score:3)
Most of them are STILL unaware of the ESIGN Act, passed eighteen years ago. It recognizes digital signatures.
Re:Facsimile. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Working at a company that deals with HIPAA communications for state benefit programs...we make purls all the time (with prearranged login information to verify the recipient that use secondary methods of authentication, such as SMS, etc.) so we can send important communications via email just to avoid sending via fax or USPS. The end result is that we saved several states several hundreds of thousands of dollars in mailing each year. Nothing in the email contains HIPAA information. The problem with a fax an
Just as obsolete as those wo use them. (Score:1)
Yes, it is that assumption that is, as always, the weak link in the chain. Long strings of digits and human fallibility mean that thousands of documents are sent to the wrong destination every day... if not every hour.
But hey, that's okay, "It was a accident". :facepalm:
mnem
Fax are obsolete, just like the organizations which rely on them.
Still interacting with governments (Score:2)
[Fax is common among] Lawyers, insurance companies, and others that have to interact with governments.
Doctors of all kinds, service workers of all kinds, lots of people still use faxes
Service workers interact with state assistance programs run by governments. Doctors interact with Medicare and Medicaid,* which are run by governments. Doctors also interact with insurers, who interact with governments in countries attempting universal availability of coverage.
* And foreign counterparts
Facsimile: authentication. (Score:3)
Easy way of putting signatures onto documents.
Re:Facsimile: authentication. (Score:4, Interesting)
This.
My broker (stock, not pawn) e-mails me PDFs of forms for signature. Most of the time, I sign it and scan/e-mail the signed copy back. On rare occasions, they want a wet-signed copy. Signed with blue ink, so it's evident that it's a real signature instead of Photoshopped. Those have to go back via snail-mail.
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Signed with blue ink, so it's evident that it's a real signature instead of Photoshopped.
Even Adobe Acrobat allows you to insert a blue signature (or any other color) onto a PDF. No need for Photoshop, or a printer, or a fax machine.
Only once have I had a digitally inserted signature rejected, and that was because I had to sign more than one page, and they noticed the signatures were identical.
So now I have three digital signatures, each slightly different, and rotate them when I need to sign more than one page.
Re: Facsimile: authentication. (Score:2)
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That sounds a lot more complicated than just signing a page and faxing it.
Only if it is already on paper. 99% of the forms I fill out are downloaded or attached PDFs. So click to sign, click to attach, click to send. Done.
Even if you are dealing with a paper document, signing, scanning and emailing is easier for most people, because then you don't need a fax machine or a landline. I have neither.
... and if you need your own copy of the signed document for your records, you will end up scanning the paper form anyway.
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So is print/sign/scan/email. Or better yet, sign/scan/save, and then just paste your signature image into documents, then email. Paper sucks.
Until 18 years ago. ESIGN Act 2000 (Score:2)
Tthe ESIGN Act was passed eighteen years ago. It recognizes digital signatures. Adobe makes it really easy to sign a PDF, which you then email back.
Re: Until 18 years ago. ESIGN Act 2000 (Score:2)
No phone? A mouse works, just like 18 years ago (Score:2)
If you don't have a touch screen (a phone), a mouse works just as well today as it did 18 years ago.
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When your doctor sends you to get blood drawn, those results come back to him as a fax. They are also sent via electronic data, but a shocking number of medical facilities still do everything by fax, and not because of anything having to do with the government.
When I was in Houston, I could barely believe it when I learned that the world class Hermann Medical Center there still uses faxes for everything. I mean, they got freaking robots doing surgeries and gene splice
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They are also sent via electronic data, but a shocking number of medical facilities still do everything by fax, and not because of anything having to do with the government.
Do you happen to know if that has changed? and if so, what the current reasoning is?
The reason the fax continued existence is blamed/credited to government is because signatures sent over fax are legally recognized as signatures by every government agency in the US.
Similarly with actual paper signatures.
For some silly reason, a signature replicated and sent by any other means isn't always considered legally binding.
While most hospitals and doctors do now use electronic data for many things because.. well b
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There are no signatures on blood work results. It's just a list of test results. And yet those are always faxed, even by the biggest nationwide labs in the country, like Quest Diagnostics.
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>"Do you happen to know if that has changed? and if so, what the current reasoning is?"
Due to HIPAA, fax remains very important in the healthcare field. It is considered a "secure" transport/channel, just like the US mail. Meanwhile, Email is not considered "secure", unless it and/or the attachments are encrypted (and with no PHI in the subject or unencrypted body). And there is no "good" (good = easy, quick, standardized, compatible, universal) standard for Email encryption, unfortunately.
Fax "just work
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If my bank can run an online banking website that prevents anyone but me getting into the data (using a combination of both strong authentication and the latest HTTPS standards, why cant medical providers do the same thing? Diagnostic lab makes the data available via a secure portal, doctor logs onto the secure portal and downloads it. Need a different doctor to get the information, easy enough to authorize that different doctor to get it as well.
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>"why cant medical providers do the same thing? "
Because we have a business to run and can't afford to deal with the money or time assigning, verifying, maintaining, using every human a separate "login" to every single proprietary "portal" for every business. They often barf on certain browsers, or if you don't use java, too. Sometimes they are incompatible with greylisting. Often they have no help when they break. They can severely delay access to the information, too. I speak with first-hand knowl
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Early implementations of anything need work. You as a practitioner should be part of the process of specifying electronic medical records interfaces that suit your type of practice. Work towards a world in which EMR interaction is a benefit to you, rather than being mostly for the benefit of ‘coding’ and billing.
We WILL have EMR. If you pull back into your burrow and insist on staying with quill and vellum, all it means is that you will have had no input into whatever EMR system is imposed on yo
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>"We WILL have EMR. If you pull back into your burrow and insist on staying with quill and vellum"
I am not sure who the "you" / "your" you are addressing, but if it is me, I already deal with an EMR every day. But that means nothing, because every EMR is different and there isn't that much communication between them and lots of PHI requests are from people and entities who have no access.
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Because it is often difficult to get different parties to cooperate enough to get more modern IT systems to integrate.
For example, I recently worked on a project where several hospitals and primary care facilities outsourced their laboratory services to a 3rd party laboratory serving multiple hospitals and clinics. They wanted to connect their individual EHRs and orders/results systems to transmit orders and receive the
Re:Facsimile. (Score:4, Interesting)
When your doctor sends you to get blood drawn, those results come back to him as a fax. They are also sent via electronic data, but a shocking number of medical facilities still do everything by fax, and not because of anything having to do with the government.
And that test results page is packed with medically needed information that arrives as a goddamned image, as though it were a wedding picture. Someone in the doctor’s office has to sit down and transcribe that information into storable form. You better hope that person doesn’t miss a digit or transpose two fields.
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It's even worse than that. The test results are actually stored as digital data, and in fact, they are available on the portal for the doctor's office even before the doctor gets them.
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There's a reason that that 1.1 million doctors directly cause 250,000 death per annum, or about one every four years per doctor on average.
While 400 million gun owners cause 14,000 deaths per annum.
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That they "have to interact with governments" is not the only reason they use them. The paper copy helps provide an invaluable paper trail, and can last much longer than a more easily deleted computer record.