| ▲ | bb88 3 days ago |
| Yes, but doctors offices are still the last places in the US to use a fax machine. |
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| ▲ | dotancohen 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| The fax protocol provides a real-time recipient receipt. Email doesn't. Seriously. That's the reason that fax is still popular in the medical industry. |
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| ▲ | const_cast 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Also the limitations of fax sort of end up being it's differentiator to email and it's biggest advantage. Not needing an email server is a big boon, not really being susceptible to phishing is a boon, and with modern fax over internet it's virtually indistinguishable in user experience from email. | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I remember fax phishing even before I had ever heard of email. From many large companies, simply paying a sub $100 invoice was standard procedure without even checking with the other internal bodies. | | |
| ▲ | const_cast 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This is true, but it's much less of a concern because: 1. You get way less faxes than emails. 2. Faxes can't steal credentials. 3. You should be auditing expenses anyway. |
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| ▲ | sabas_ge 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If only a standard existed to do this... Hint: it exists since ages in Italy and it has been extended to Europe recently (See Registered Electronic Mail - RFC 6109 and ETSI EN 319 532 – 4) |
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| ▲ | Beretta_Vexee 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The United States is not the only country in the world. In France, it is almost impossible to make an appointment without using Doctolib, which is SaaS software for booking consultations (and lots of other things). |
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| ▲ | Hendrikto 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Same in Germany. Doctolib got popular very quickly, in just a fee years. Now it’s almost mandatory. I am not a fan. It’s a big outage waiting to happen. It’s an enormous data breach waiting to happen. It will inevitable be enshitified. | | |
| ▲ | triknomeister 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Doctolib is not the problem at all. he real problem is the lack of government proactivity on these initiatives. If the government had already thought about this in advanced (even in 2013 when doctolib was just starting out), then there could be very strong protectiosn for data which would then allay all of these concerns, and we might have had multiple players in this space. The best use of Doctolib for me is that I can make appointments without having to speak perfect German on phone. I can make appointments in evening when I'm back from office and can relax a little bit. So, doctolib is a godsend for me as an immigrant here. and I'm guessing for a lot of people too. I can look up doctors who are available without having to bother the receptionist. This is much more efficient way of doing things. | |
| ▲ | Beretta_Vexee 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Doctolib is a B2B model. Patients are not the customers; medical practices are the customers. Doctolib saves on the cost of a medical secretary, which is why it is so popular. What's more, this is a sensitive and regulated field, where trust is essential. They can't afford to mess around if they don't want to quickly find themselves subject to moe restrictive regulations. They were heavily criticised in France because they allowed charlatans and people with no medical training to register (particularly for Botox injections).
As soon as this became known, they quickly rectified the situation. | |
| ▲ | skeezyboy 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > It will inevitable be enshitified.
that only happens with the western venture capitalist model in private companies. doctolib makers already have income from all these government contracts instead of just relying on adverts and hype |
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| ▲ | alex_suzuki 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Not just in the US, they‘re surprisingly popular still here in Switzerland. I‘ve written interfaces to fax gateways (convert incoming fax to pdf, extract metadata, save in DB) multiple times. |
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| ▲ | kensai 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Germany here. Fax is king. |
