How DirectTrust is embracing fax for health data exchange | TechTarget (2024)

The evolution of fax

According to Cichielo and Clark, fax technology has advanced beyond squeaky office appliances and thermal paper rolls.

Healthcare organizations send most faxes today via secure cloud fax. Traditional fax operates over phone lines, while secure cloud fax transmits information digitally.

Everyone has tried to rip out fax, but you can't rip and replace. It doesn't work. There has to be a transition.

"In the age of internet and cloud, we have telephony in the cloud," Cichielo said. "This way, people don't have to plug machines into a phone line."

Secure cloud fax systems offer benefits over traditional faxing, including integration with EHR platforms and elimination of physical paper handling.

Instead of manually faxing patient records through a fax machine, providers can enter their referral partners' fax numbers into the EHR and send the data via cloud fax. The receiving system could be another EHR, a fax machine, a printer or another device capable of handling fax data.

"You don't have a user walking up and playing with crinkly paper," Cichielo emphasized. "They're working inside existing medical systems, and fax almost becomes a metaphor, a euphemism, this nebulous entity where it's just the transport."

The future of fax

As healthcare organizations continue to fax billions of documents every year, a group of industry stakeholders, including Clark and Cichielo, have come together to develop a standard to enhance fax security and interoperability.

Convened by the healthcare industry alliance DirectTrust, the Interoperable Secure Cloud Fax Consensus Body aims to create a data standard for exchanging documents via fax across different cloud fax platforms.

This standard will enhance fax through cross-platform and cross-organizational identity assurance, standards-based exchange of metadata and federated security standards.

"This consensus body will enable us to lay the groundwork to send more metadata and more identity assurance in a way that enhances the innate security features that fax already has," said Clark.

"Whether fax is here for another decade or more, it's the transition step that we're making now through DirectTrust while incorporating fax rather than demonizing it that is the way to the future," he said.

Cichielo echoed Clark, underscoring the importance of embracing fax rather than dismissing it.

"Everyone has tried to rip out fax, but you can't rip and replace," said Cichielo. "It doesn't work. There has to be a transition."

"Rather than everyone having these conversations trying to kick fax to the curb, let's use the power of DirectTrust as an entity that provides an overarching framework for identity assurance and minimum compliance," he continued.

Cichielo noted that creating a standard for interoperable secure cloud fax will help support the application of advanced technology to enrich data sharing, including through the application of large language models.

For instance, the cloud fax industry could adopt AI to help route faxes to the correct department within a hospital. Currently, staff must sort through fax inboxes manually, which can sometimes take 15 to 30 minutes per document, Cichielo said.

By modernizing fax through a secure cloud fax standard, DirectTrust and industry stakeholders are not only preserving fax's reliability and security but also paving the way for a seamless transition to more advanced health data exchange.

Hannah Nelson has been covering news related to health information technology and health data interoperability since 2020.