HOSPITALS and GP practices in East Lancashire are still reliant on 'archaic' fax machines, it has emerged.

Commissioners said the majority of their 81 GP practices have fax machines, while hospital trust bosses said they also use them.

It comes after The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) has revealed that NHS hospital trusts nationally own almost 9,000 fax machines.

Richard Kerr, chairman of the Royal College of Surgeons’ Commission on the Future of Surgery, criticised the health service’s reliance on the technology.

He said: “Fax machines were in popular use about the last time England were in a World Cup semi-final.

"Despite all the years of hurt, NHS fax machines are still gleaming.”

“The advances we are beginning to see in the use of artificial intelligence and imaging for healthcare, as well as robot-assisted surgery, promise exciting benefits for NHS patients.

"As the RCS’s Commission on the Future of Surgery is discovering, there is so much more to come.

"Yet, alongside all of this innovation, NHS hospital trusts remain stubbornly attached to using archaic fax machines for a significant proportion of their communications.

"This is ludicrous."

But Russ McLean, East Lancashire's patients' champion, defended the use of fax machines as back-up when more modern technology 'goes wrong'.

He said: "The NHS last year experienced a cyber attack and everything was down.

"Fax machines played a pivotal part in allowing staff to communicate.

"I know that the out of hours service also still fax prescriptions to chemists.

"So this outdated technology is absolutely necessary still."

In a joint statement, Blackburn with Darwen and East Lancashire CCG and East Lancashire Hospitals Trust (ELHT), said fax machines are one communication tool that is available to them.

But they said most GP practices are now adopting and using digital technology.

While ELHT is working to remove fax machines where appropriate and replace them with digital technologies such as Cofax which converts fax messages to secure email.

They said in the joint statement: "An example of this is the introduction of an electronic referral system, whereby patients across East Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen are starting to benefit from a more efficient process when their GP refers them for a hospital appointment."

Lancashire Care, the county's main mental health organisation, said it does not use physical fax machines but have a fax server which allows them to send electronic communications to recipients who use physical fax machines if required.

A spokesman said: "We are not aware of any of our services that have or rely on a physical fax machine to communicate with colleagues or patients.”