Cloud-Native Faxing: Future-Proofing Fax Infrastructure in Healthcare

While fax protocols remain a proven way for the healthcare system to communicate, the underlying hardware and software allowing for the secure exchange of clinical information are ripe for change.

Advancements in computing and networking have made state-of-the-art technology readily available and affordable; meanwhile, the skilled personnel and technical support necessary for maintaining legacy infrastructure have increased in price. And the recent elimination of financial protections for plain old telephone service (POTS) will lead to additional costs for laggards depending on outmoded systems and services.

These circumstances should compel healthcare organizations to future-proof their fax and communication capabilities by going digital, specifically leveraging cloud-based fax solutions.

Multiple industries, healthcare among them, are looking to the cloud to support a new wave of digital transformation. According to a 2022 survey of more than a thousand IT decision-makers, the main drivers for cloud adoption are:

• maintaining compliance with new regulations and policies through easier updates (53%)
• becoming more agile and able to support innovation (45%)
• enabling efficient growth and scaling of their business (43%)
• bringing new products to market faster (43%)
• reducing infrastructure costs through improved efficiency (42%)

Much is expected from investments in the cloud, and rightfully so, considering how the evolution of cloud computing has led to new levels of usability, scalability, elasticity, and resiliency.

Despite these clear benefits, “many healthcare companies, payers, and providers have not achieved the full potential value of cloud” as a result of an inability to scale or demonstrate value quickly enough, according to McKinsey & Company.

“As more healthcare organizations begin to embrace the cloud, it is essential to bear in mind that cloud transformations on their own do not necessarily create game-changing value,” the consulting firm added. “To do so, they should focus on enabling and accelerating the enterprise strategic agenda. They should also be driven jointly by IT and the business, and include adoption of a cloud-operating model.”

Why “cloud-native” is better than just “cloud”

When it comes to fax technology in healthcare, it is not uncommon for organizations to have dedicated staff and resources to support legacy infrastructure. But that approach brings with it a host of challenges going forward.

“These organizations have built integrations into a single piece of software that sits on-premise, by no means the most elegant and long-term solution they really need,” says Consensus Cloud Solutions Global Chief Marketing Officer Bevey Miner. “They must manually manage support, capacity, and upgrades year in, year out. Security is a concern with a device sitting onsite. Being a single point of failure, it can break and go offline, undermining availability — and it’s the least cost-effective way to achieve the desired capability.”

Increasingly, organizations understand that shifting fax technology to the cloud is advantageous — but not all “cloud” options are the same. 

For example, the hybrid-cloud approach — with components on-prem connecting to cloud-based messaging platforms — prevents a healthcare organization from achieving the full benefits of the cloud. The responsibility for maintaining legacy technology remains with the organization, and not enough is placed on the solution provider.

A full cloud approach can eliminate these headaches, reduce costs, and improve operational performance.   But still, this may not deliver the full benefits that are now possible with the latest cloud technologies. “What if the organization wants to move into Azure or another hyperscaler? These organizations would take something unnecessary and retrofit the cloud to accommodate it. It’s a half-measure that creates future headaches,” Miner notes.

This is where cloud-native platforms and solutions are really set apart from cloud-based or hosted solution providers.

Unlike traditional software development that takes years to come to market, full cloud platforms built on cloud-native infrastructure leverage microservices and serverless functions explicitly designed for the cloud. Physical hardware is replaced by a chosen cloud platform, and operational efficiencies are gained through dynamic scalability and elasticity. In place of highly manual tasks to maintain physical and virtual infrastructure, software is distributed using containers with additional resources dedicated to system health and performance.

Platforms architected in this way are inherently more financially and operationally efficient, and organizations can gain this advantage by working with a faxing partner with a truly cloud-native setup.

“We can operate infrastructure in a more efficient manner, adding capacity as necessary without disruption. Faxes process faster. Documents spend less time in the network. And that performance can be tracked,” Miner explains.

“Conversely, organizations facing the addition of infrastructure to add capacity need to manage it differently,” she continues. “They have little appetite for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on purchasing and installing new components until they know they have the necessary traffic.”

Additionally, continuous improvements are a staple of cloud computing, creating new levels of efficiency as a matter of business.

“We’re constantly sizing the platform to deliver a performance standard that organizations could never achieve on their own. It’s just easier for us to manage, so we can do it better and more cost-effectively,” Miner emphasizes.

While the healthcare industry tends to lag behind others in its adoption of modern technology, it has the opportunity to take advantage of the lessons learned by early adopters and implement infrastructure that is agile, flexible, resilient, scalable, and cost-effective. Moving from an on-premise to a cloud-based faxing environment will ensure that timely communication between healthcare organizations remains secure and efficient, guaranteeing that vital data is available at the point of care. And selecting a fax provider that is truly cloud-native will deliver the greatest value possible.

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About Consensus Cloud Solutions, Inc.

Consensus Cloud Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: CCSI) is a global leader of digital technology for secure information transport. The company leverages its technology heritage to provide secure solutions that transform simple digital documents into actionable information, including advanced healthcare standards HL7 and FHIR for secure data exchange. Consensus offers eFax Corporate, a leading global cloud faxing solution; Consensus Signal for automatic real-time healthcare communications; Consensus Clarity, a Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence solution; Consensus Unite and Consensus Harmony interoperability solutions; and jSign for secure digital signatures built on blockchain. For more information about Consensus, visit consensus.com and follow @ConsensusCS on Twitter.