Royal Bolton Hospital has been phasing out faxes for years

Matt Hancock banned fax machines as part of his drive towards a tech-savvy NHS after it was revealed more than 8,000 of them were still in use across the UK.

Trusts were made to look foolish with their reliance on the old-fashioned communications, but some have pointed out that during the WannaCry ransomware attack in May 2017 they were working while emails were down.

A spokesman for Bolton NHS Foundation Trust said: “We have been phasing out the use of fax machines and have gone from using around 300 to around 100 currently across the Trust (hospital and community), and are continuing to reduce that number.

“We have secure electronic means of sending and receiving information, however not all our partners have electronic systems, and therefore we need to keep some faxes for the time being.”

In July the Royal College of Surgeons learnt via Freedom of Information (FOI) requests that more than 8,000 fax machines were sill being used in hospital trusts around the country.

Newcastle Upon Tyne trust still had 603 fax machines, the most of any trust which responded.

Nearby Pennine Acute Hospitals, which includes Fairfield General Hospital and Royal Oldham Hospital, was ninth with 215 fax machines.

Bolton NHS Foundation trust did not respond to the FOI but told The Bolton News the number of machines in use had gone from 300 to 100 in about three years following a drive to cut down.

Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said: “Because I love the NHS, I want to bring it into the 21st century and use the very best technology available.

“We’ve got to get the basics right, like having computers that work and getting rid of the archaic fax machines still used across the NHS when everywhere else got rid of them years ago.

“I am instructing the NHS to stop buying fax machines and I’m setting a deadline for getting rid of them altogether. Email is much more secure and miles more effective than fax machines.

“The NHS can be the best in the world ­— and we can start with getting rid of fax machines.”

Trusts have been told they are banned from buying any new fax equipment from the new year and must be phased out entirely from March 31, 2020.

Richard Kerr, chairman of the Royal College of Surgeons Commission on the Future of Surgery, called the reliance on fax machines “absurd”.

He said: “Advances in artificial intelligence, genomics and imaging for healthcare promise exciting benefits for patients. As these digital technologies begin to play a bigger part in how we deliver healthcare it is crucial that we invest in better ways of communicating the vast amount of patient information that is going to be generated.

“Most other organisations scrapped fax machines in the early 2000s and it is high time the NHS caught up. The RCS supports the ban on fax machines that will come into place in March 2020.”