The New Age of Digital Interoperable Faxing

Consensus Cloud Solutions

By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist#TheIncrementalist

On this episode I talked to John Nebergall, Chief Operating Officer of Consensus Cloud Solutions which we recorded live from HIMSS 21 in Las Vegas. Consensus is a spin off from J2 and eFax and they provide interoperability and streamlined workflows in a simple platform that keeps you connected through each patient’s continuum of care.

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Taking a contrary view to the general perception on Fax technology Consensus plans on using the infrastructure to create an interoperable solutions. As one commentator put it during the HIMSS interoperability showcase, they were seeing red.

And it’s not hard to understand why – we have all had our fill of paper based systems that lock information away and fail to delivering information and knowledge into the care process. But that resistance is based on the old traditional perception of Faxes as a paper *output*. That’s where John and Consensus have focused their efforts in the output component of Fax technology.

As John points out – Faxes are Digital information, albeit in the form of Audio files since the technology was developed in an era when phone lines were the majority share of communications links.

As you can see in the image paper information is scanned encoded into an audio file and train fitted to another machine to be rendered. You can think of it a little like the Transporter in Star Trek.

Except with inanimate object and specifically with paper.

But just because the information starts off as paper does not mean it has to end up as a paper render, in fact its the start of the creation of an end-to-end interoperability solution.

Listen in to hear us discuss the new age of faxing who as John describes

is that fax is a very useful, very secure, very reliable, very inexpensive protocol for moving information from point A to point B electronically

You can hear why faxes remain a primary form of communication that is legally accepted thanks to a level of security that other methods do not enjoy. We perceive something to be old and limited usefulness but there are still many examples of technology that have been revamped to continue to deliver value and function to our world and faxes are no different. Faxes can produce HL7, FHIR and discreet data

Don’t write off the fax technology quite yet – this is not your father’s fax anymore

About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.

This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.