Busting the Myth: Digital Fax is Still Vital in Healthcare—and AI is Transforming It

Bashing fax has almost become a luxury belief in healthcare, but the reality is that digital fax remains essential for many providers. 

When we as an industry fail to recognize that reliance on digital fax is necessary for these “digital have-nots,” like post-acute care facilities, mental health clinics, birthing centers and substance use disorder clinics, we judge unjustly. And it’s this attitude of tech superiority that holds our industry back from applying pragmatic solutions that already exist. 

This is an area where artificial intelligence (AI) can be applied to digital fax to level the data-sharing playing field, ensuring that all clinicians have access to a patient’s complete medical information, no matter where they seek care.

For instance, by applying AI in the form of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to digital fax, this empowers healthcare organizations to leverage the vast amounts of unstructured data trapped in faxes and many other document types, unlocking valuable insights and streamlining workflows. It’s a process called intelligent data extraction, and it can even be applied to handwritten notes.

Find out more in my article for MedCity News, “To Advance Health Equity, We Must Stop Shaming Fax.”

Want to know more about our intelligent data extraction capabilities? Learn about Consensus Clarity, or reach out to start a conversation.