NHS is ‘stubbornly attached’ to outdated fax machines and still uses THOUSANDS of them

THE NHS is “stubbornly attached” to fax machines, with thousands still in use across the country.

Trusts in England own at least 8,946 of the outdated pieces of technology, Freedom of Information figures show.

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A report last year named the NHS as the world’s largest purchaser of fax machines.

The technology, which scans paper sheets and prints out a copy at another machine, was popular in the 1980s and ’90s but rendered largely obsolete by email and the web.

Richard Kerr, of the Royal College of ­Surgeons, called the NHS’s continued fax use “ludicrous” and urged it to invest in better communication.

He said: “It cannot continue to rely on technology most other organisations scrapped in the early 2000s.”

The RCS contacted 124 trusts, of which 86 provided data.

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