The truth is that no one knows. Fax machines simply appeared in GP clinics en masse one day in 1974 and never left.
Fax machines were invented thousands of years ago by the ancient Greeks.
“I’ve invented something called a fax machine lads; no Acacius, a “fax” machine… and no, you can’t put that in it.”
The ancient Greeks invented lots of other things as well, like wheels and horses and great big pointy spears, not to mention lamb yiros with extra chips.
Over the years, people have faxed pretty much anything they can get hold of: pamphlets, notes, parchments, scrolls, great big bumper books of magic or bibles as they’re sometimes called, even photocopies of their own stupid faces and hands.
Over the years the basic design of the fax machine has been fine tuned to produce the crappy thing we still use today.
The only downside is that when the fax machine is switched on, it screams like a robot in a blender and is arguably the single shittiest way to transmit information ever invented.
Today, fax machines are mostly found in museums or in doctors’ offices, which are basically museums for people who are still alive but who have a cough.
And it’s no accident that the world’s supply of fax machines are now predominantly bought up by the NHS in the UK and by general practice here in Australia.
No other sector in the modern civilised world relies so heavily on the fax machine and it’s a remarkable fact that if one of your patients has been losing weight and shitting blood you have to rely on a piece of technology which is only marginally more reliable than a carrier pigeon.
Sometimes a patient doesn’t hear back from the hospital because the day you sent their urgent colonoscopy referral the fax machine in out-patients ran out of paper. This may seem like a reasonable excuse, but AHPRA takes a pretty dim view of it.
In the future the fax machines in general practice will be phased out and replaced with slightly better fax machines, because as we all know, the wheels of technological change turn very slowly in GP land.
