Short answer: fax survives in healthcare because it is universal, instant and requires no account on the receiving end. But a fax carrying a diagnosis or a prescription carries health data, which the GDPR treats as a sensitive category. Between equipped professionals, the right channel is the country's secure messaging system: MSSanté in France, KIM in Germany, the eHealthBox in Belgium. Fax remains acceptable as a fallback, with a confidential cover page and a verified number. A patient or a clinician can use FaxTelecom for a one-off send to a department that only takes faxes. It is not a tool for routine clinical exchange.
FaxTelecom sends faxes from a web browser to landlines in seven countries (France, Canada, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal). It does not receive faxes and does not issue numbers. This article is for information only: it does not replace the guidance of your professional body or the advice of your data protection officer.
Why the fax machine holds on in pharmacies and wards
Walk into a neighbourhood pharmacy or the front desk of a radiology unit and you will likely spot one. Three reasons explain its staying power.
- Everyone has one. A care home, a rural nursing practice, a veterinary clinic, a private lab: each can receive a fax without installing anything.
- It needs no directory. Secure messaging requires both sender and recipient to be registered. Fax only needs a number.
- It leaves a paper trail. For a pharmacist receiving a repeat request, the sheet coming out of the tray slots straight into the dispensing workflow.
These strengths have a flip side: fax has no idea who is standing at the machine on arrival, and the phone line is not encrypted. That holds for every fax service, FaxTelecom included.
What the GDPR says about health data
Article 9 of the GDPR lists data concerning health among the special categories. Processing it is prohibited in principle, with exceptions that include medical care. For a clinician, this translates into three practical duties:
- Minimise. Send only what the recipient needs: the report, not the whole record.
- Secure. Choose a channel suited to the risk. Several data protection authorities, notably in Germany, have stated that fax does not offer adequate protection for routine use with this kind of data.
- Be accountable. Be able to say who sent what, to whom, and when.
Our page on fax and data protection sets out who is responsible for what when an online service handles the send.
Secure messaging, country by country
| Country | Main tool | Key points |
|---|---|---|
| France | MSSanté (trust framework overseen by France's digital health agency, ANS) | Interoperable professional mailboxes; patients get a mailbox in Mon espace santé |
| Germany | KIM, within the telematics infrastructure (gematik) | Used for electronic doctors' letters; e-prescriptions mandatory for statutory insurance patients since 2024 |
| Belgium | eHealthBox (eHealth platform) | Secure mailbox for identified care providers |
| Spain | Receta electrónica and the national health system's digital clinical record | Organised by autonomous community |
| Italy | Ricetta dematerializzata, Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico | Regional rollout |
| Portugal | Receita sem papel, SNS platforms | Prescription sent to the patient by text or app |
| Canada | Provincial solutions (electronic health records, clinical messaging) | Fax remains very common; several provinces run programmes to reduce it |
E-prescribing has already taken a large share of fax's historic traffic between doctors and pharmacies. What remains are the edge cases: unequipped contacts, cross-border exchanges, a practice software outage.
Good habits when fax is the only option
Before sending
- Verify the number from a reliable source: the letterhead of an official letter, the facility's website, a call to the front desk. Never a number copied from an old fax.
- Warn the recipient by phone so they stand by the machine, especially if it is shared.
- Strip out what is not needed: full insurance number, history unrelated to the request.
On the cover sheet
This leading page deserves care. It names the recipient, gives the page count and a call-back number, and carries a notice such as: "Confidential document containing health data. If you received it in error, please let us know and destroy it." Our cover page generator produces it as a PDF. For more on how to word it, read our cover page best practices.
After sending
File the proof of transmission with the record, and call if the recipient does not confirm receipt of an urgent document.
When to use FaxTelecom, and when not to
| Situation | Is FaxTelecom suitable? |
|---|---|
| A patient must fax a certificate or form to a hospital department that only accepts fax | Yes |
| A practice whose fax machine is broken needs to send a one-off letter to a pharmacy | Yes, as a fallback |
| A pharmacy sends a request to an insurer whose only published channel is fax | Yes |
| Regular exchange of reports between two clinicians on MSSanté or KIM | No: use secure messaging |
| Receiving lab results | No: FaxTelecom does not receive faxes |
| Sending to a mobile number | Impossible: a fax only reaches a landline |
| Life-threatening emergency | No: call directly |
On our side, your PDF reaches our servers over HTTPS, serves the transmission and nothing else, and is deleted automatically afterwards. No advertising is added. The last leg, the phone line to the receiving machine, is however not encrypted. Our fax security guide explains where the real risks lie. To reach a public body or an insurer, see also our page on how to fax a public body.
In a nutshell
Fax has not left the corridors of healthcare, but it is no longer the default channel. Keep it for cases where the recipient has nothing else, verify the number, take care over the cover sheet and send only what is strictly needed. For everything else, your country's secure messaging system is built for the job.
Topicshealthgdprsecurity
