Faxing is essential to the healthcare industry, providing a myriad of benefits that you need to be taking advantage of. But physical fax machines are proving to be a problem in the 21st century.
Physical fax machines present a real risk to data protection and GDPR compliance, including:
Risks posed by physical fax machines are not just potential disasters. Recent reports have displayed that they can and do regularly cause data breaches and other problems.
The physical fax machine also has other problems besides being a risk to data security compliance when it comes to patient data transmission and sharing. These included:
Online cloud faxing provides healthcare organisations with a new method of sending and receiving fax without the need for a physical fax machine. You can maintain vital communication practices and carry on seeing the benefits of faxing documents, all on a digital format.
The advantages of moving to online cloud faxing include:
You can sign up to eFax quickly and easily. Access is immediate, which means your healthcare organisation can experience better faxing solutions and improved security right away.
Fax is a staple of the medical sector, but the physical fax machine is becoming outdated. Nearly 9,000 fax machine units exist within the NHS alone and that doesn’t include associated private firms, such as pharmaceutical companies, private practices, chemists and other related healthcare organisations. There is no escaping the fact that faxing is a major part of the British medical community, but as the world changes and industry evolves, so too must the method of sending a fax.
We all know something needs to change, but it isn’t the fax that has to go.
As you know, fax is essential to the healthcare industry. When faxing medical records, both sender and receiver can achieve certain benefits unattainable through other platforms of data transmission. For example, fax remains the best way to send a legally binding document immediately, as signatures sent through other digital processes, such as email, are not usually admissible in places like a court of law. When it comes to signing off on important medical documents, acquiring prescriptions or filing order forms, a legally binding signature is essential. Fax also provides immediate opportunities for physical file transmission, which is another vital tool in the fast-paced world of healthcare.
The convenience of the fax as it relates to the medical industry cannot be understated.
But, while these advantages make faxing invaluable to the medical sector, you’ve still likely seen many calls for upgrades to NHS IT systems, an end to fax machine reliance and for trusts to ‘axe the fax’. As the calls come for the end of the fax machine, it’s essential that healthcare professionals like you, are supported to find an alternative solution.
Fax machines present a number of disadvantages when it comes to the transmission of patient records and other medical files. These include:
A few years ago, in a perfect example of what is known in the fax machine world as the “fat finger problem,” a report outlined how a medical practice accidentally sent patient records to that person’s employer, instead of their new healthcare provider. It was a simple mistake, one that anyone could make in the fast-paced and complex environment of healthcare. The situation occurred after a misdialed fax number, but the result was sensitive patient data being submitted to an unauthorised party. Not only was this a breach of data protection, but it also led to claims of negligence and backlash from the unhappy patient.
Such breaches in 2018 present even more significant problems for medical practices, thanks to tightening laws such as GDPR. This demonstration of just how easy it is to break data protection protocols through the use of physical fax machines highlights exactly why the technology needs to be removed from the medical sector. But if you get rid of your physical fax machine, what options do you have?
The answer is online cloud faxing.
Online cloud faxing presents a new way of faxing medical records and other sensitive documents. It is to fax what email is to snail-mail: an evolution of the process that takes the benefits and enhances them with new features and opportunities.
Online cloud fax works by allowing for the transmission of fax documents through a digital platform. eFax software enables files to be transferred via a cloud server. You can both send and receive faxed documents, and it is compatible with other cloud-faxing software as well as fax machines. This means you can send a document from your smartphone to an NHS fax machine, just as you would if you were using your own physical fax machine, and vice-versa. While you experience the benefits of new technology, you are still able to communicate with others using standard fax machine units.
Documents can either be sent as computer files, if they exist in the digital space already, or they can be uploaded simply by capturing them with the camera of a smart device. Documents can then be signed using touchscreen technology and date-marked to ensure authenticity and legal compliance. Online cloud faxing provides all the functionality of faxing, without the need for an actual fax machine.
However, it also does much more than that.
The evolution from the physical fax machine to online cloud faxing has resulted in numerous improvements to the standard faxing practice. This means that many of the disadvantages of physical fax machines have been eliminated and a number of new advantages have been achieved. These include:
You can adopt online faxing with minimal effort. eFax’s specially designed software is made to be easily integrated into current IT systems, without the need for any new hardware or the replacement of equipment. eFax Corporate is also Level 3 of the NHS Digital IG Toolkit assessment so you can be comfortable it meets your security needs. So how does it work?
The process is simple:
It really is that simple.