WestFax Blog - Latest News in Faxing

Check out the latest news, updates and trends in digital cloud fax. HIPAA Compliant Fax and Secure Business Fax

How to Send a Fax from Your Multi-Function Printer (MFP)

How to Send a Fax from Your Multi-Function Printer (MFP)

Fax technology continues to play a critically important role in healthcare, financial services and government institutions. It has come a long way since the early days of dedicated phone lines and thermal fax paper, though. Medical providers, in particular, rely heavily on the security and reliability of electronic fax to stay in compliance with HIPAA. In most small offices and home offices, fax can still play an important role, especially where security is a high priority.


Get your MFP setup for Email to Fax today!
What is a Business Associate Agreement and Why Do I Need It?

What is a Business Associate Agreement and Why Do I Need It?

If you are a healthcare provider, insurance company, or other entity covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, you may have heard of something called a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). The BAA is a critical part of making sure that you are meeting HIPAA requirements; and if you don't have a BAA in place, it could end up costing you a lot of money.


Learn more about Business Associate Agreements
Digital Cloud Fax Technology and Interoperability in Healthcare

Digital Cloud Fax Technology and Interoperability in Healthcare

From its analog origins in the sixties to the infinitely scalable Digital Cloud Fax platforms today that can send/receive/process and manage millions of faxes; Fax has never been as robust and powerful. The future of Fax and its role in healthcare has been a topic of much discussion but with the vision of an all-digital healthcare system still evolving, fax is seeing its architecture evolve to meet the challenges of complete interoperability.


Learn about Digital fax and interoperability
API Values and Return Parameters [DECODED]

API Values and Return Parameters [DECODED]

Unless you are deep diving into the SDK you may miss some of the enum values that are useful for implementing the API. What are Enums? Basically they are a list of values that can be used as an input value for a web service or they are presented as output values. What does that help with? It allows you to have some control over the flow. We'll look at the most frequently used API calls and break down the values allowed.


Explore API values and return parameters
What is a HIPAA Compliant Fax?

What is a HIPAA Compliant Fax?

I recently had a routine medical checkup and as I was signing in I always look over to see if they have an old fax machine sitting somewhere. At some point a medical assistant asked one of the ladies at the desk if the fax needed a cover sheet. The woman at the desk quickly assured her that all faxes get coversheets no matter what. "All Faxes get cover sheets! No exceptions…ever!". It's good to see my Doctors office take HIPAA so seriously.


Learn about HIPAA compliant Fax
4 Ways to increase your productivity and maximize your business impact.

4 Ways to increase your productivity and maximize your business impact.

Every entrepreneur from the guy fixing cars out of his garage to someone running a consultancy knows that time is the #1 problem. Not enough time to get everything done. We cut corners, sacrifice effectiveness and in the end we hurt our business. These are some less common and not usually hit upon ways to increase productivity and maximize your time on the important work of executing your business priorities.


Increase your productivity today!
Five Benefits of Cloud Fax for Medical Offices

Five Benefits of Cloud Fax for Medical Offices

The fax machine as an office appliance is outdated, insecure and a complete waste of time and money. How can you be sure that patient records are secure? Is someone monitoring the fax machine 24/7? Fax is still the best way to securely transfer patient records, but not with a traditional fax machine. Smart medical offices managers are making the switch to cloud based fax solutions and it's easier than you may think.


Here are the five benefits of making the switch today
Feds Kill E-mail In Favor of More Secure Fax for FOIA Requests

Feds Kill E-mail In Favor of More Secure Fax for FOIA Requests

The Freedom of Information Act is a federal statute passed in 1966 that allows ordinary citizens in the United States to access documents and information held by the government. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is making some much needed changes to the way FOIA requests are submitted starting March 1st in order to deal with these requests via a more secure method. The FBI is now completely abandoning e-mail requests in favor of good old secure fax.


Read about the FBI and FOIA requests
Will Fax Ever Die?

Will Fax Ever Die?

In 2014 WestFax celebrated the 50th anniversary of the fax machine. In 1964 at the height of the British pop invasion while America was still reeling from the Kennedy assassination, Xerox invented the modern office fax machine. While this office equipment staple has lost much respect over the past several years, it still remains essential to most businesses. Particularly businesses that require secure document transport to maintain HIPAA compliance. Marketing departments in every industry are also rediscovering the power of fax advertising to avoid spam filters and present a unified communication approach to reinforce their digital marketing efforts.


Learn more about Fax
History of the Fax, and Why it's not Going Away.

History of the Fax, and Why it's not Going Away.

The origin of the "Fax" machine has it's roots much earlier than the more widely accepted invention of the fax by Xerox corporation in 1964. If you want to look back into history over the mechanism for reproduction of a printed object over long distance you have to look back to Scottish inventor Alexander Bain, who worked on chemical mechanical fax type devices and in 1846 was able to reproduce graphic signs.


Read More about the history of the fax machine