I have been reading this debate with interest and it appears that despite all our efforts to produce good quality results, our end users of the service often want to "settle" for imperfect solutions in delivering the final product.
The introduction of electronic reporting systems has been hampered by the percieved security problems (as already illustrated faxing has virtually no security, phoning has virtually no security and the postal system probably has some but even then with the printed report you don't actually know who is reading them)
Electronic reporting systems have also been hampered by the percived disadvantage that they are not convienent as paper reports etc.
I think however that electronic reporting of results is the best way forward to solve these problems. I'm not talking about messaging as I feel this is too complicated a solution. I think we should be moving towards browsable results reporting systems for everyone. This way we can control the layout of our results (on the web page) to maximise information delivery. We can have security and can control who can view which results. We can also add informational value to the results via context sensitive links to further information.
I get the feeling that it is cheaper to invest in a quality "results webserver" than it is to spend time and effort faxing, printing and telephoning reports.
Regards
Craig Webster
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