Healthcare Technology Featured Article

January 18, 2016

TigerText Improves Short-Range Hospital Communications


Pagers and faxes were great technology for the time. The fax still has some viable uses to this very day. There's no doubt, however, that technology has advanced substantially since those days, and fairly begs to be put to use. TigerText is taking the ball of new tech and running with it, and its new TigerPage and TigerFax tools should finally kill off lingering pager and fax systems. 

As the names suggest, TigerPage and TigerFax allow a mobile device, generally a smartphone, to function in the same fashion as a pager and a fax machine, receiving pages and faxes on the device. The transmissions are kept secure, fully in line with HIPAA protocols, and the system becomes much more efficient overall as those who need access to pages and faxes have same right on a device carried along in everyday activity.

TigerPage issues its users a pager number, and users can leave voice messages or callback numbers at that number, which is then delivered into an inbox for the recipient to recover as needed. Voice pages can even be transcribed to text, to help ensure that the message gets through, and it's also possible to yield one-click callback thanks to included direct-dial phone number capability. The user's phone number is also kept private, since all communications are routed through the issued number, not the mobile phone number.

TigerFax, meanwhile, allows faxes to be sent to, read from, and responded from a mobile device. A status indicator confirms delivery of the material in question, and a wide variety of file types—from PDF to JPEG—are covered under its use. Since it's all electronic, no ink or paper is called into use, and there's no time wasted standing around a fax machine for a receipt.

TigerText's co-founder and CEO, Brad Brooks, noted that the pager and fax machine are about “...30 years past their prime...” but are still widely used. With TigerText, these tools are not only replaced, but also consolidated down into smartphone apps that can be used within a device that can be readily carried around. That speeds up healthcare responses, improves communication, and generally makes for a better overall environment.

While the fax machine and pager do have some value, it might be safe to say that the value provided in the hospital setting is over. Being able to bring these two applications to a smartphone is a great step toward improving the efficiency of healthcare. Improved efficiency commonly means either better service or lower prices for the user; it either allows more to be provided with the same resources, or the same to be provided with fewer resources, and that's a picture that adds up to either better service or lower prices.

Given the state of healthcare today, better service or lower prices—or even both at once!--sounds like a minor miracle, and TigerText's new applications might be just the thing to make it happen.




Edited by Kyle Piscioniere
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