This Is The Fax Machine Story Of The Year I Reckon. Surely The USA In 2020 Can Do Better?

This appeared in the New Your Times last week:

Bottleneck for U.S. Coronavirus Response: The Fax Machine

Before public health officials can manage the pandemic, they must deal with a broken data system that sends incomplete results in formats they can’t easily use.

By Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz

·         July 13, 2020

Public health officials in Houston are struggling to keep up with one of the nation’s largest coronavirus outbreaks. They are desperate to trace cases and quarantine patients before they spread the virus to others. But first, they must negotiate with the office fax machine.

The machine at the Harris County Public Health department in Houston recently became overwhelmed when one laboratory sent a large batch of test results, spraying hundreds of pages all over the floor.

“Picture the image of hundreds of faxes coming through, and the machine just shooting out paper,” said Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of the department. The county has so far recorded more than 40,000 coronavirus cases.

Some doctors fax coronavirus tests to Dr. Shah’s personal number, too. Those papers are put in an envelope marked “confidential” and walked to the epidemiology department.

As hard as the United States works to control coronavirus, it keeps running into problems caused by its fragmented health system, a jumble of old and new technology, and data standards that don’t meet epidemiologists’ needs. Public health officials and private laboratories have managed to expand testing to more than half a million performed daily, but they do not have a system that can smoothly handle that avalanche of results.

Health departments track the virus’s spread with a distinctly American patchwork: a reporting system in which some test results arrive via smooth data feeds but others come by phone, email, physical mail or fax, a technology retained because it complies with digital privacy standards for health information. These reports often come in duplicate, go to the wrong health department, or are missing crucial information such as a patient’s phone number or address.

More here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/upshot/coronavirus-response-fax-machines.html

Another reason it seems to move to some secure electronic messaging technology, I guess. Even e-Fax would save a lot of trees!

With the cases (and reports) now numbering in the millions there have been more than a few trees felled to allow this steam communication to happen – very slowly!

Interestingly, later in the article, a Digital Health expert points out that all sorts of issues also arise because of the USA’s refusal to implement a unique patient identifier – despite recognising the need decades ago!

The USA really does need a major investment in basic Digital Health infrastructure for just this sort of situation as well as the routine operations of the health sector!

David.