[keithnz]

Fax is odd, it was a fantastic thing when it first came about, and it has some desirable properties.

- 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.

[gruez]

>- The transport network is dedicated and not open to anyone and covered by quite strong laws in many countries

is it? what if the hospital is using a VOIP solution?

[dredmorbius]

...when it first came about...

[analog31]

- It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something

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. ;-)

[XaspR8d]

Except seeing it was digitally received is often quite insufficient to seeing it was received by a human it was intended for. All too often in dealing with healthcare and gov't orgs our faxes get lost with no way of identifying where they went. Presumably it is a mismanaged shared fax inbox where individuals are not actually being alerted to their messages...

[keithnz]

somewhat ironically, the fax will be captured in digital form, some "middle" person will read it, then work out who it is for, then email it to those concerned / attach it to a patient record.

[DEADBEEFC0FFEE]

No quite, many fax system are just modems, image conversion to pdf, email. Plenty to go wrong. Paper faxes might be revived by the machine by you have no idea who read it, or who didnt. Fax machine are typically MFP devices, so now you may have some part of a medical record on your photocopier HDD.

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.

[EamonnMR]

> It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something

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.

[ses1984]

Some points seem contradictory. How do faxes have history that's easy to see, and if the other end successfully received, but it doesn't have delivery receipt like email?

[keithnz]

not sure I'm understanding? But fax sends data via a protocol, it knows it has sent by virtue of the protocol completing. The fax can keep trying sending and it will keep track of those faxs that have gone through vs those that haven't. Email doesn't have delivery receipts....it's either done by bolting it on in clients or various hacks used by spamme....errr..email marketing systems.

[ses1984]

Just because you get a receipt from the protocol doesn't mean it made it from the fax machine to the intended recipient. Folks who send faxes still regularly follow up with calls and emails, "just sent the fax did you get it?" and the answer is often "no, what fax?"

[kungito]

All these issues could easily be resolved on the internet if someone bothered a bit. Keep a whitelist of connections, private-public key communication (you can exchange keys off internet if needed), receive and read confirmation etc. It's not internet's fault that some idiot is storing passwords in plaintext and/or sending them over unencrypted connections