133 Molesworth Street PO Box 5013 Wellington 6140 New Zealand T+64 4 496 2000
23 November 2020
To Health Sector Chief Executive Officers and Chief Information Officers Kia Ora Update: Ministry of Health and ACC guidance on secure digital communications In June 2019, the Ministry of Health (the Ministry) and ACC published guidance on secure digital communications for the NZ Health & Disability sector advising all health sector agencies of the need to migrate off the use of analogue fax by December 2020. This was because we had been advised a deadline by when analogue faxing would not be supported by telecommunications network providers. Thank you to those who have already made this move. We want to advise that we will be delaying the December 2020 deadline. We are now aware that the telecommunications network providers have extended the deadline for analogue fax decommissioning. We will advise a new deadline date for moving off analogue faxing once we have more clarity from the telecommunications network providers. Moving off analogue faxing is inevitable and the deadline (once advised) will be upon us sooner than we realise. There are digital fax alternatives available today and we encourage adoption of these now. There are several reasons we must move away from using faxes full stop. To that end we will undertake some work to understand the business process impacts of moving off faxing to help inform us on the advice we will provide on alternative approaches and what enablers we may need to provide nationally. We will work with DHBs and PHOs/General Practices on this with the support of Patients First. For clarity, the Ministry requirement for you to migrate off analogue faxing remains. Please refer to Appendix A for guidance on technical alternatives to analogue faxing. This updated guidance reflects a change in timeframes and approach.
I encourage you to continue to transition off the use of analogue faxes as soon as possible. The Ministry will continue to provide guidance and support through the transition period, including releasing more advice and guidelines for various types of replacement technologies as appropriate. Yours sincerely
Shayne Hunter Deputy Director-General Data and Digital
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Appendix A - Guidance on Analogue Faxing Alternatives The following are technical alternatives to analogue faxing for consideration. 1. Fax Automation These are either available as prebuilt offering or can be implemented by a developer using programmable interfaces to send and receive faxes using a range of methods, including APIs (REST, SOAP, HTTP, .NET, SMTP), on-premise Windows Server software or File Transfer Protocols / Services (FTP/S). 2. Patient and provider portals (preferred) Secure portals (or websites) can be used to securely share patient information between health providers. Portals can also be used to update information. 3. Digital workflow solutions Secure messaging services integrated into clinical or business solutions (for example, electronic ordering or referrals) can be used to replace some use of faxing. 4. Other 3rd party services There are third party digital post services that send documents securely to email addresses.
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