
Choke Point for U.S. Coronavirus Response: The Fax Machine - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/upshot/coronavirus-response-fax-machines.html
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robertnn
Working as a software developer in the medical industry, I'm not at all
surprised. Fax machines are everywhere in hospitals. In some sense I see it
almost as a failure every time a fax is being sent.. but from a more objective
view, the fax is really a very reliable form of communication. Of course, it
doesn't scale very well, as the article describes.

(Note that I'm not in the US, but in Sweden.)

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DanBC
> but from a more objective view, the fax is really a very reliable form of
> communication

I agree with you, but.

When healthcare professionals use fax machines they normally have a protocol
that they work to. This lets them know that their telephone line is working,
that the fax machine dialled the other number, that the other number picked
up, and that the fax was sent. Some of them for urgent stuff include a final
"make a call and make sure they got, and read, the fax".

The problem is that these protocols were created when fax machines were on
POTS lines. Now many machines are using weird fax-to-email and back again
gateways, so we get all the disadvantages of fax combined with the flakiness
of email.

Fax is _everywhere_ in healthcare, and someone designing a better safer
communication tool that addresses the reasons fax is used could make a lot of
money.

