Information Technology at Work

For this assignment I interviewed my mother. My mom works for a health insurance company and a large part of her job is to protect personal health information that is being transferred between the insurance company and health care providers. Traditionally in order to transfer health information it had to be printed out from an electronic record system, then faxed to the health care provider, next the receipt from the fax had to be scanned into the system, and finally all paper documents had to be shredded. My mom described this as a long and mundane process that took mostly comprised of babysitting the fax machine. About two years ago her company started to use RightFax, a software that allows you to 'fax' documents straight from the computer. She says that it eliminates errors from having to  type in a fax number and simplifies the process of recording successful and failed faxes. Additionally she doesn't have to stand by the fax machine while it is running. RightFax simply runs on her computer allowing her to complete other work and notifies her when it has completed. She says that this software eliminates the mundane, unskilled work in her day and allows her to complete more work while enjoying her job more.Overall, this information technology seems to be one that is not replacing skilled human work but rather freeing people to do more skilled and fulfilling work.