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Why the Fax Machine Refuses To Die
snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia waxes befuddled on the ongoing existence of the fax machine. 'Consider what a fax machine actually is: a little device with a sheet feeder, a terrible scanning element, and an ancient modem. Most faxes run at 14,400bps. That's just over 1KB per second — and people are still using faxes to send 52 poorly scanned pages of some contract to one another. Over analog phone lines. Sometimes while paying long-distance charges! The mind boggles,' Venezia writes. 'If something as appallingly stupid as the fax machine can live on, it makes you wonder how we make progress at all. Old habits die hard. It just goes to show you: Bad technology generally isn't the problem; it's the people who persist in using that technology rather than embracing far superior alternatives.'"
People seem to think that because a fax machine scans physical documents that it represents an authentic signature on a document. Solid reasoning? Not a chance, but when has that stopped anyone from reaching stupid conclusions?
I actually work for a certain fortune 500 company that produces laser printers, and while we are phasing a lot of our fax focus out, there just isn't the faith in email that there is in fax. With a fax, you have a physical copy ending up in an office that you know someone has received. There's no spam filter to worry about and you know that that fax is going to get to the right person a lot more than than email if you don't have that person's direct email. For something you have a physical copy of, fax is just a lot simpler. Until there are more printers out there that have email addresses built into them, we're going to be a ways off from replacing fax.
Pharmacist here. They are still in heavy use between us and the md offices, for a few reasons. E-Rx ins't always 2-way, so a refill request often has to be faxed. Many times we need to contact the MD office and they can't take a call. A fax gives them all the info, in a simple readable format to take care of later. Sometimes a hospital needs a patient profile for the last 6 months and it would take 30mins to explain it all over the phone, so it gets faxed.
Emailing HIPPA documents in not an option and I wouldn't use it even it was.
Exactly. Email is NOT secure. You don't know how many servers your email passes through or what they do with it, and you can't guarantee the receiver is protecting the information. Encrypted email is far harder to implement in your network of contacts than a fax machine. Even then, if public key vendors can be hacked/spoofed/compromised, then how can you say encrypted email on a private small business server won't be? Doctors pretty much are obligated to use fax or they will almost certainly end up violating HIPAA.
The IT industry has not been able to provide a superior or even equal solution to fax yet.
A FAX has a legal advantage. A third party, the phone company, can verify the sender, receiver and date/time. There is also a bunch of case law regarding when a FAX can be or must be accepted as a valid legal document.