AI System coordn8 Transforms Fax Processing and Digital Consent Workflows in Healthcare

The growing pressure on healthcare systems to work faster, smarter, and with fewer administrative bottlenecks has led to a surge in technology-driven solutions. One of the newest examples comes from Penn Medicine, where a homegrown AI-powered system called coordn8 has significantly reshaped how patient information is processed. What makes this development interesting is not just its technical capabilities, but the practical outcomes: thousands of hours saved, faster patient intake, more satisfied staff, and a smoother experience for patients who have long been stuck dealing with slow paperwork cycles.

Below is a clear breakdown of everything coordn8 achieves, how it works, and why it matters — backed by all the specific details reported in the recent announcement, along with additional context on fax use in healthcare and the broader rise of AI in administrative medicine.

What coordn8 Is Designed to Solve

Fax machines may sound outdated to most industries, but in healthcare they remain deeply embedded because of interoperability obstacles, HIPAA privacy requirements, and longstanding workflows that rely on paper communication. At the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS), an astonishing 8,000 to 9,000 faxes arrive every single day. These faxes often contain critical patient information such as referrals, test results, and intake records — and processing them manually is time-consuming, repetitive, and prone to delays.

coordn8 was built to directly address this problem. Developed by the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation (CHTI) at Penn Medicine, the system automatically ingests, categorizes, and files faxed documents straight into electronic health records. Alongside this automation, coordn8 also supports digital consent forms that allow new patients to authorize information releases electronically instead of through traditional mail.

All of this leads to one major theme: reducing unnecessary waiting time on both the patient side and the staff side.

Dramatic Improvements in Fax Processing Speed

Before coordn8, staff at UPHS typically needed two minutes to handle a single fax. With thousands of documents arriving daily, these minutes add up rapidly. After rolling out coordn8 during a nine-month pilot in 2023, the average processing time dropped to about 40 seconds, effectively tripling the speed of the entire workflow.

To put this into perspective, for every 100,000 faxes handled — an amount UPHS reaches every 11 to 12 days — the system saves roughly 2,300 staff hours. This translates to administrative employees being freed from repetitive tasks and redirected toward more patient-facing responsibilities, which contributes directly to better patient experiences and higher team morale.

In just over a year and a half of real-world deployment, coordn8 has handled more than 3,000 faxes per day on average and has already saved 8,500 staff hours across the health system.

Digital Consent Cuts a Full Week Off New Patient Intake

Fax filing isn’t the only part of the intake process that was slowing things down. Many healthcare organizations — including UPHS — require patients to sign a release-of-information form before staff can gather past medical records. Traditionally, this is mailed to the patient, filled out, and mailed back. At UPHS, this cycle took about one week, which was a major bottleneck.

coordn8’s digital consent feature, known as eDisclosure, changed this. Instead of mailing a form, UPHS now sends a secure link via text message through Penn Medicine’s existing Way to Health platform. Patients complete the form digitally, and staff receive it instantly.

This shift reduced the time needed to obtain patient signatures by 85%, enabling teams to start collecting medical records six days sooner than before. Staff satisfaction with this part of the process grew from 41% to 90%, and patients also respond more quickly because the process is simpler and does not require waiting for physical mail. Paper forms are still available for those who prefer them, but the overwhelming majority now choose the digital route.

Staff Response and Satisfaction

During the initial pilot period, CHTI surveyed staff who regularly interacted with coordn8. The result was a notable improvement in workplace satisfaction:

Satisfaction with the new patient intake process rose from 35% to 60% in just two weeks.
The “effort score” for filing faxes — a measure of how hard the task feels — also increased from 35% to 60%.

These kinds of jumps in sentiment are uncommon in healthcare administration. They highlight not only the operational gains but also the psychological relief that comes from eliminating repetitive, time-intensive tasks that offer little professional fulfillment.

Expansion Across the Health System

coordn8 was initially deployed across 150+ fax lines spanning multiple departments at UPHS. Given its early success, Penn Medicine is now extending both the fax-processing automation and the digital consent workflow across outpatient services throughout the system.

CHTI leaders emphasize that successful adoption in other organizations will require choosing the right departments first — those with both high need and high willingness to change established workflows. When team members see colleagues benefiting from new technology, overall buy-in expands more easily.

Why Fax Machines Persist in Healthcare

To many outside the medical world, fax machines seem ancient. However, the reality is more complicated. Healthcare organizations rely on faxing for several reasons:

Regulatory compliance: Faxing is perceived as a secure method under HIPAA.
Lack of interoperability: Not all electronic systems talk to each other, even within the same city.
Legacy infrastructure: Large medical systems have workflows built around faxing that cannot be replaced quickly.

Because of these constraints, the goal is not to remove faxing entirely but to make the workflow smarter, faster, and less burdensome, which is exactly what coordn8 achieves.

AI’s Growing Role in Administrative Healthcare

coordn8 is part of a much larger trend: the rise of AI tools designed specifically to cut down on the administrative burden that takes up so much time in healthcare settings. Beyond fax automation, there are now AI tools that:

Generate clinical documentation from conversation audio
Assist with scheduling and triage
Extract key information from patient histories
Automate insurance verification
Streamline EHR navigation

Research consistently shows that administrative load is one of the leading contributors to burnout among healthcare workers. Systems like coordn8 demonstrate how AI can begin solving these problems in very practical and measurable ways — not through futuristic ideas, but by addressing the quiet inefficiencies that consume thousands of hours every year.

The Takeaway

coordn8 is not a flashy AI model meant to diagnose disease or assist in surgeries. Instead, it tackles the administrative backbone of healthcare — the unglamorous but essential workflows that often determine how efficiently and humanely a system can operate. By automating fax filing, digitizing patient consent, and streamlining intake processes, coordn8 has delivered clear improvements: faster processing times, reduced delays, happier staff, and thousands of hours saved.

As healthcare organizations continue to explore AI solutions, coordn8 stands out as a practical example of how targeted automation can create ripple effects across an entire system.

Research Reference:
Automating Faxed Patient Information: A Homegrown Technology Solution to Reduce Workforce Burden
https://doi.org/10.1056/cat.25.0117