
Show HN: Sqope Health – Fax is still a thing. Trying to kill it - ckbreaux
https://www.sqopehealth.com/
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ckbreaux
Hi All - Founder here. The healthcare industry still uses the fax for 75% of
its communication. It’s like you and your friends are still passing
handwritten notes in class while the rest of the school is on their iPhones.

We are trying to make the transition to modern tools as simple as possible.
The reason the fax persists is because: 1) everyone uses it and 2) it meets
healthcare regulations (unlike email). The Sqope app allows any professional
to send a file or message to any fax number, email or registered user. We are
specifically avoiding patient interactions. There are lost of solutions out
there for patients and that’s not where most of the fax activity happens.

I was floored at how much manual data entry, phone tag or lost work happens
because of the fax. I never worked in healthcare so didn’t really understand
the extent until I dug into customer interviews.

I’m around for the next couple hours and would love your feedback, thoughts or
just to complain about the problem.

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verdverm
Do you know why it is like this?

Hint, it's not the reason you have. Lots of people have tried to build
something better without understanding the real problem or what it will take
to solve it.

~~~
verdverm
One is Epic, they run a majority of systems and fight incessantly against
making things better. I think the other major player (can't recall name) is
not much better.

There is actual legislation in place, healthcare is just super slow to adopt
things. Hospitals are saying not really until next decade.

Each hospital system uses dicom fields and values in inconsistent ways. There
is significant one site code paths to handle all these cases and much
development time will be spent there.

Getting new software into hospitals is super hard, because bureaucracy. I have
a client in this space that is doing rather well creating results and spending
way less than the typical health are company. But getting everyone on the same
page and willing to buy is difficult, these people are busier than most.

Another hard thing is that you need to get HIPAA consent for each individual,
and possibly cross products with the locations?

I wonder if/how much covid will change the above.

The investors will want to see you doing pilots / contracts with US healthcare
providers. They don't give a damn about the rest of the world because there is
no money in healthcare in other countries.

