Fax of life: NHS uses 9,000 old machines

Hospitals’ reliance on old-fashioned fax machines to communicate has been branded “ludicrous” by senior doctors. A freedom of information request from the Royal College of Surgeons revealed nearly 9,000 fax machines were in use across hospitals in England. Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Trust topped the list, using 603 machines. Richard Kerr, chair of the Royal College of Surgeons’ Commission on the Future of Surgery, said it was “farcical” for the NHS to be dependent on “archaic” technology while encouraging the use of artificial intelligence in medical treatment and research. He said the NHS was “stubbornly attached” to fax machines, adding it “cannot continue to rely on a technology most other organisations scrapped in the early 2000s”. Ninety-five trusts, around three-quarters of the total, responded to the survey. Surrey and Sussex…

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Computeractive (Digital) - 1 Issue, 533

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