Fax isn’t Dead, It’s Just Bad
Rich Nollen is one of the most respected healthcare business development professionals in the US and a global thinker known for creating strategies that drive growth. As founder and CEO of Innovare HP, he specializes in demand capture and pipeline acceleration, helping healthcare brands forge meaningful connections and create lasting impact.
Of all the businesses I imagined building, a fax company was never on the list. Seriously, who wakes up thinking, “You know what the world needs? Better faxing.” Apparently, I did. Not because faxing fascinated me, but because after years of working in healthcare, I got tired of seeing the same problems. Lost documents. Failed transmissions. Staff chasing confirmations, and that familiar question heard in hospitals everywhere: “Did the fax go through?”
At some point, you stop laughing at the absurdity and start wondering why nobody has fixed it. That is how Eldon began.
Healthcare has evolved, faxing got comfortable
I'm a nurse by profession, but much of my work today involves healthcare operations, business development, and patient access. I've seen how something as ordinary as sending a document can turn into an unnecessary exercise in patience.
We've embraced electronic health records, telehealth, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics. Yet we're still printing documents just to feed them into a machine that may or may not cooperate.
The irony isn't lost on me. But faxing itself isn't the enemy. Healthcare continues to depend on it because it works across organizations with different technologies. The problem is everything we've learned to tolerate around it. Inconvenience, when repeated often enough, starts looking like normal operations.
The problem was never just the fax machine
Think about a hospital discharge planner coordinating a patient's next level of care. There are clinical decisions to make, families to update, and facilities to contact. The last thing that person needs is to babysit a fax machine.
That's the thinking behind Eldon. Instead of printing and scanning documents, users can send faxes directly from their computers or email. Incoming faxes arrive as PDFs in a cloud dashboard and can be routed to the appropriate team. If a transmission fails, Eldon automatically retries. Organizations can keep their existing fax numbers rather than asking referral partners to update years of contact information.
For busy intake departments, that means less time sorting paperwork and more time reviewing referrals. For administrators, it means better visibility into communication activity. For growing organizations, it means managing multiple users, permissions, and workflows without adding another machine to the office.
We've also incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) assisted data extraction to help identify information in incoming documents. Not to replace human judgment, but to reduce the tedious work that keeps people from using it.
Of course, healthcare communication requires serious attention to security and privacy. Eldon supports administrative safeguards and offers Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ready capabilities with a Business Associate Agreement through its Custom Plan.
But here's something I've always believed: Security should be expected. Ease of use should be, too. The value isn't simply sending a fax faster. It's removing the unnecessary work surrounding it.
There's a human being behind that document
My nursing background shapes how I see this business. To some, a fax is just another document. To me, it could represent a patient waiting for psychiatric placement, a family searching for answers, or a discharge planner doing everything possible to coordinate care.
A fax platform won't solve staffing shortages, create available beds, or eliminate insurance barriers. I wish it could. But if it removes one unnecessary obstacle from someone's already complicated day, that's a meaningful start.
It's also why we chose a simple philosophy for Eldon: Technology with a human heartbeat. Technology should work quietly in the background so people can concentrate on the work that actually requires a human being.
Good ideas need great people
While Eldon began with a frustration I couldn't ignore, turning that frustration into a real product has been a team effort.
I'm especially grateful to my Innovare HP team: our software engineers, Ivor and Abc, who translate ideas into technology that actually works, our creative director, Kristin, and her team, Llewi and Arvie, who give our vision its identity and personality, and our financial consultant, Roy, who helps keep our ambitions grounded in financial reality.
Building a company takes more than a good idea. It takes people willing to wrestle with the details, challenge assumptions, and keep improving what others might consider good enough.
Trust me, making faxing feel modern takes some imagination. I'm fortunate to be building Eldon with people who have plenty of it.
Sometimes innovation means fixing the past
Entrepreneurs are often told to look for the next big thing. But I've come to believe that some of the best opportunities are hiding in the things we've stopped questioning.
The process everyone complains about. The workaround nobody wants to change. The familiar excuse, “That's just how we've always done it.”
Pay attention to those moments. There might be a business opportunity hiding in plain sight. I didn't create Eldon because the world needed another fax company. I created it because healthcare deserves better tools, including for the ordinary tasks we rarely think about until something goes wrong.
We could keep complaining about outdated faxing, or we could do something about it. We chose to build. Because innovation isn't always about inventing the future. Sometimes, it's about finally fixing the past.
Still babysitting your fax machine?
Your team has better things to do. See how Eldon can simplify sending, receiving, organizing, and tracking faxes without the paper chase.
Book a personalized Eldon demo and experience modern cloud faxing, done right. Get started here.
Read more from Rich Nollen
Rich Nollen, BSN, RN, Healthcare Marketing & Strategic Growth
Rich Nollen is a nurse turned entrepreneur and the driving force behind Innovare HP, a healthcare marketing agency that's transforming how providers connect with communities. After transitioning from bedside to boardroom, Rich’s journey has been nothing short of wild, fueled by a passion to spark ideas, share stories, and empower others. With a growing presence across multiple states, including Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and California, Innovare HP is committed to making healthcare more accessible and impactful. Rich’s message: If a nurse can dream big and invest in change, so can you.
