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People need to stop hating on fax. Hospitals still use fax because it is a much more punishable crime to tap phone lines which requires physical access, as oppo

People need to stop hating on fax. Hospitals still use fax because it is a much more punishable crime to tap phone lines which requires physical access, as opposed to a server that could be infected from a hacker halfway across the world.

TuringNYC 7y ago
I see you point in theory, but as a victim of identity theft, from what I can see almost none of these are enforced punishments. From what I experienced and from what I've seen friends experience in the US: - Someone can steal money in your bank account - Sign up for an expensive phone plan and get a $1000 iPhone upfront - Use your healthcare benefits And you basically file a police report, hardly anyone cares, and you are left with a bunch of paperwork to go fix it yourself. You get the money back eventually with plenty of paperwork. At which point do thieves committing all sorts of punishable crimes actually get punished? In my case, the person signed up for a line of credit at Lowes, purchased 20k of construction goods, presumable all in a videotaped store and got off scott free.
AzzieElbab 7y ago
it has nothing to do with security. Nurses like fax machines because it gets them a break. I've seen them print e-refferals just to fax to each other.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  That's not even the same thing. People mess around with just about anything they can get their hands on- so what if the nurses send messages to each other and have fun? I'd be willing to give the people who take care of me a ream of paper if it meant they were in a good mood.
  - AzzieElbab 7y ago
    It has nothing to do with fun or messing around. It is about people being incentivized to avoid the tooling. I worked in US and Canadian health IT, my perspective is completely different from patient's. This may not have huge impact in high-end American hospitals, but in Canada where hospitals are underfunded and drowning in beuracracy it is a disaster
jahewson 7y ago
I’m willing to bet that most digital PBXs out there could be infected by a hacker from halfway across the world too.
- pixl97 7y ago
  Saw that happen yesterday. A vendor had insecure remote access setup to an older NEC PBX. Someone attacked it and was making international calls with it.
keithnz 7y ago
Fax is odd, it was a fantastic thing when it first came about, and it has some desirable properties. - It's direct point to point communication (over a network) - The transport network is dedicated and not open to anyone and covered by quite strong laws in many countries - It's easy to see the history of communications - It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something - It's relatively standardized and ubiquitous ( in health ) Email would be the closest thing, but it doesn't have all the advantages, and the extra add ons that would make it better (like encryption, delivery receipt, digital signatures) are not standardized and/or ubiquitous ( and often hotly argued about ) So fax is the lowest common denominator, that, if it was proposed today, would not be accepted for many of its disadvantages, but it's now hard to find a way to replace it.
- analog31 7y ago
  - It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something I think this is a biggie. It means your workflow doesn't need to include going back later and checking to see if your document was received, and then trying to send it some different way. You don't have to guess which way the recipient is capable of receiving a message. It's the original e-mail. ;-)
  - keithnz 7y ago
    somewhat ironically, the fax will be captured in digital form, some "middle" person will read it, then work out who it is for, then email it to those concerned / attach it to a patient record.
  - XaspR8d 7y ago
    Except seeing it was digitally received is often quite insufficient to seeing it was received by a human it was intended for. All too often in dealing with healthcare and gov't orgs our faxes get lost with no way of identifying where they went. Presumably it is a mismanaged shared fax inbox where individuals are not actually being alerted to their messages...
- gruez 7y ago
  >- The transport network is dedicated and not open to anyone and covered by quite strong laws in many countries is it? what if the hospital is using a VOIP solution?
pabs3 7y ago
Fax machines are just as insecure as that server. Last year taking over a network using just a fax number was demonstrated: https://research.checkpoint.com/sending-fax-back-to-the-dark-ages/ https://research.checkpoint.com/sending-fax-back-to-the-dark...
roywiggins 7y ago
And because it's explicitly grandfathered in to HIPAA as a "secure" method of transmitting patient data. Also, fax machines are very often just as internet connected as anything else. Email to fax, fax to email, fax-over-IP, it's not just modems dialing each other on copper anymore.
pretendgeneer 7y ago
No Hospitals use fax because it's too hard to change, most information traveling through fax is sent via automated fax servers so it is the worst of both worlds, hack-able server and unencrypted transmission protocol.
msla 7y ago
> Hospitals still use fax because it is a much more punishable crime to tap phone lines which requires physical access Punishable, sure, but that's CYA thinking. It's less secure, because there's no way to encrypt fax like you can encrypt email. Punishment doesn't help anyone except the CEOs, unless, of course, it was the CEO's information that got leaked. Also, yes, phone calls are sent over the Internet just like emails. The big difference is, yes, that phone audio isn't encrypted.
DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y ago
That is not why they use them. Doctors like scribbling, and hate being told what to do, that's why.
EamonnMR 7y ago
Hospitals use fax because A) they think it's secure (it's not) and B) they think it's easier (it isn't)

TuringNYC 7y ago

I see you point in theory, but as a victim of identity theft, from what I can see almost none of these are enforced punishments. From what I experienced and from what I've seen friends experience in the US: - Someone can steal money in your bank account - Sign up for an expensive phone plan and get a $1000 iPhone upfront - Use your healthcare benefits And you basically file a police report, hardly anyone cares, and you are left with a bunch of paperwork to go fix it yourself. You get the money back eventually with plenty of paperwork. At which point do thieves committing all sorts of punishable crimes actually get punished? In my case, the person signed up for a line of credit at Lowes, purchased 20k of construction goods, presumable all in a videotaped store and got off scott free.

AzzieElbab 7y ago

it has nothing to do with security. Nurses like fax machines because it gets them a break. I've seen them print e-refferals just to fax to each other.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
That's not even the same thing. People mess around with just about anything they can get their hands on- so what if the nurses send messages to each other and have fun? I'd be willing to give the people who take care of me a ream of paper if it meant they were in a good mood.
- AzzieElbab 7y ago
  It has nothing to do with fun or messing around. It is about people being incentivized to avoid the tooling. I worked in US and Canadian health IT, my perspective is completely different from patient's. This may not have huge impact in high-end American hospitals, but in Canada where hospitals are underfunded and drowning in beuracracy it is a disaster

jahewson 7y ago

I’m willing to bet that most digital PBXs out there could be infected by a hacker from halfway across the world too.

pixl97 7y ago
Saw that happen yesterday. A vendor had insecure remote access setup to an older NEC PBX. Someone attacked it and was making international calls with it.

keithnz 7y ago

Fax is odd, it was a fantastic thing when it first came about, and it has some desirable properties. - It's direct point to point communication (over a network) - The transport network is dedicated and not open to anyone and covered by quite strong laws in many countries - It's easy to see the history of communications - It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something - It's relatively standardized and ubiquitous ( in health ) Email would be the closest thing, but it doesn't have all the advantages, and the extra add ons that would make it better (like encryption, delivery receipt, digital signatures) are not standardized and/or ubiquitous ( and often hotly argued about ) So fax is the lowest common denominator, that, if it was proposed today, would not be accepted for many of its disadvantages, but it's now hard to find a way to replace it.

analog31 7y ago
- It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something I think this is a biggie. It means your workflow doesn't need to include going back later and checking to see if your document was received, and then trying to send it some different way. You don't have to guess which way the recipient is capable of receiving a message. It's the original e-mail. ;-)
- keithnz 7y ago
  somewhat ironically, the fax will be captured in digital form, some "middle" person will read it, then work out who it is for, then email it to those concerned / attach it to a patient record.
- XaspR8d 7y ago
  Except seeing it was digitally received is often quite insufficient to seeing it was received by a human it was intended for. All too often in dealing with healthcare and gov't orgs our faxes get lost with no way of identifying where they went. Presumably it is a mismanaged shared fax inbox where individuals are not actually being alerted to their messages...
gruez 7y ago
>- The transport network is dedicated and not open to anyone and covered by quite strong laws in many countries is it? what if the hospital is using a VOIP solution?

pabs3 7y ago

Fax machines are just as insecure as that server. Last year taking over a network using just a fax number was demonstrated: https://research.checkpoint.com/sending-fax-back-to-the-dark-ages/ https://research.checkpoint.com/sending-fax-back-to-the-dark...

roywiggins 7y ago

And because it's explicitly grandfathered in to HIPAA as a "secure" method of transmitting patient data. Also, fax machines are very often just as internet connected as anything else. Email to fax, fax to email, fax-over-IP, it's not just modems dialing each other on copper anymore.

pretendgeneer 7y ago

No Hospitals use fax because it's too hard to change, most information traveling through fax is sent via automated fax servers so it is the worst of both worlds, hack-able server and unencrypted transmission protocol.

msla 7y ago

> Hospitals still use fax because it is a much more punishable crime to tap phone lines which requires physical access Punishable, sure, but that's CYA thinking. It's less secure, because there's no way to encrypt fax like you can encrypt email. Punishment doesn't help anyone except the CEOs, unless, of course, it was the CEO's information that got leaked. Also, yes, phone calls are sent over the Internet just like emails. The big difference is, yes, that phone audio isn't encrypted.

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y ago

That is not why they use them. Doctors like scribbling, and hate being told what to do, that's why.

EamonnMR 7y ago

Hospitals use fax because A) they think it's secure (it's not) and B) they think it's easier (it isn't)