Posted on 09/07/2021 12:01:54 PM PDT by algore
Major backlogs in processing patient data during the pandemic are forcing the healthcare sector to reassess its relationship with fax machines.
As coronavirus cases surged in the city of Austin, Texas, last June, beleaguered public health officials instructed anyone with symptoms to act as though they had Covid-19.
The reporting and tracing of new cases had slowed to a crawl, officials explained, partly due to an unexpected culprit: the fax machine.
The machines had kicked into overdrive as the pandemic tightened its grip on the city, spitting out printout after printout of results from Covid-19 tests. "We were probably getting thousands of cases a day that we were responding to.
It was madness," says Janet Pichette, the chief epidemiologist for Austin Public Health. "You cannot fight a pandemic using 19th-Century technology."
More than a dozen staff combed through the stacks of printed facsimiles that at times piled up to 18cm (7 inches) thick, tasked with weeding out duplicates and tracking down any missing information. From there the results were manually entered into the city's tracking system.
Similar scenes were playing out around the world, highlighting the persistence of traditional fax machines in sectors such as healthcare, financial services and real estate, despite the global uptake of email, instant messaging and cloud computing.
The inefficient sharing of data has left a growing number of governments promising to finally abandon their use of fax machines. More than 175 years after the technology was first patented and decades after it peaked as a must-have tool for businesses, could the coronavirus pandemic consign the fax machine to history?
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Fax machines are 19th century technology?
Fax machines!? lol Are they still using leeches too?
Hang on to your fax machine.
You will need it for next year’s Samizdat.
I was going to hand carve wooden blocks for my press.
I work for a certain big studio and I still see fax machines, all stand-alones. The “fax” feature is mostly part of multi-function printers like HP, Minolta etc. and it’s not going away. I know old-school producers who would “fax” script changes (not send by email etc) and we would wait for it while eating lunch.
Yes. I think fax machines came right after telegraphs. They used pendulums connected to telegraphs I think. Look it up.
Yeah, I know. I have fax capability on my printer/scanner/copier/fax machine.
see #9
Fax machines are used because securing networks with med records is expensive.
My bank finally installed secure email. It only took decades.
I hear they are, as bloodsuckers applied to wounds to pull out toxins along with blood. Correct me if I’m wrong.
MSM?.... Fauci?..... CDC?.....WHO???????
I’m amazed at how many people fact check jokes.
I thought that went out in the Middle Ages.
jotato...
The inefficient sharing of data
“Iām amazed at how many people fact check jokes.”
My daughter, a nurse, told me they used leaches, and when you dropped unneeded ones into alcohol they squeaked.
takes a lot of work for the dERPS to track and decrypt fax transmissions
I hope so! They remain the best option to treat some complications after limb reattachment and some other surgeries. Old, generally maligned, treatments often remain useful in rare circumstances. I set a patient up for serial blood letting, modern style, a couple weeks ago.
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