I’ve gotten involved in a research project that requires faxing a questionaire to a number of physicians. It is a legitimate research project, and has met all the usual ethis approval from my university.
Its been years since I’ve used faxing software on my computer, so I’m kind of at a loss where to start. A quick google search showed some results, but nothing that I noticed from any sites that I consider to be really credible, although I will continue my search.
What I have is a large database of physician names and fax numbers(in excel format), as well as a questionaire. What I need is some fax software that will take the physician name, attach it to the page to be faxed, fax it, and continue down the list. Ultimately, about 1500 faxes in total to be sent out.
Does anyone have any recommendations for some faxing software that will do this?
Thanks
There used to be industrial faxing software (I worked in the industry) but I think it’s been moribund for at least ten years. It’s possible you could find a software license for cheap; they were often dependent on hardware locks. They also required industrial fax boards from Dialogic and others.
OTOH, Windows has pretty good multiple fax capabilities with low-cost software IF you use true hardware fax/modem cards. You can’t use the software-modem (softmodem?) cards and have more than one work. I have a Win2K3 server here with two consumer-grade fax cards that handled two lines simultaneously, and I think four were possible. There are several companies that make low- to middle-grade fax software; I’d have to dig through my old equipment to come up with names.
There are also network faxing services, or used to be, that would send email as faxes and vice versa. One of them might still be in business and overall a cheaper solution with high reliability.
We used to use a FaxPress fax server on our network. It behaved pretty much like another network printer, and had a fairly extensive suite of tools for managing address books, bulk faxing, etc. Some years ago it died in January, and no one noticed it until April, so we decided fax was pretty much a dead technology.
However, if you need serious faxing capacity, they are still in business.
At the risk of being accused of threadshitting, I have to ask: have you seriously considered using something more modern like email?
Physicians are the last great bastion of faxophilics. If it doesn’t come in on a fax the office manager can lay on Doctor’s desk, it’s not worth reading.
Of all my clients in the last ten years, the only ones who still insist on fax (if not “facsimile”) numbers on their materials are doctors.
Its very true, physicians love faxes. My username should probably be MDGuy instead of Pharmguy, as I jumped ship a number of years ago…so I can speak of this first hand. I think it has a lot to do with the ease, convinience, and relative security(as long as the rx I’m faxing to the pharmacy doesn’t end up somewhere it shouldn’t) of an already established system.
It would make this project so much easier if I could just email it out! Thanks for the suggestions so far. Unfortunately, Faxpress and/or running any type of server is a bit of overkill. I was hoping for a simple stand alone piece of software that could mail merge with a database of doc names and numbers, and then send it out. But, given the state of fax software today, I might not have any choice 
I thank those that have already responded, and welcome any other bits of advice!
Thanks
1500 faxes isn’t that many. I’d look into a copy of WinFax Pro, which I am pretty sure does a decent faxmail merge, and maybe a pair of hardware fax modems. You could easily send 30 faxes an hour with one line and at least 50 with two; do you need more throughput than that? I wouldn’t be surprised if you could hit 100/hour for most of the send.
Word and the Windows platform can also handle the job - Word to manage the documents and Windows Fax to manage the sends.
Feel free to ask questions or PM me - I spent six years in the industry during the era when computers and telephones were combining and have a ton of experience with this specific kind of small-scale integration. (The industry was swallowed whole by the network integrators about a year after I got out of it… almost 400 companies like the one I worked for disappeared into a dozen, and then three.) I even know how to get high-res images into faxes. 