Document digitization is a rapidly growing priority within the telehealth industry. With the push to paperless solutions, clinical IT professionals are faced with fear of image degradation from lossy compression, burdensome file storage costs, and slowed patient care. Lossless compression eases the decision-making process by providing a solution which reduces image file sizes without compromising quality. With a lossless compression software integrated into their telehealth platforms, health care providers can boost productivity in their document-related communications, reducing costs while creating a faster patient experience.

Digitization within the Telehealth Industry

The telehealth or telemedicine industry is an emerging crossover between IT and telecommunications within clinical institutions. Responding to demands for greater access to records and remote health care, telehealth relies on digital environments for communicating, diagnosing, and analyzing medical documents. The boom of telehealth implicates not only digital platforms for telecommunication, but also requires efficient use of the documents used in these telehealth systems. Maintaining both quality and efficient access to medical images—such as MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) and multislice computed tomography (CT)—has become top-of-mind for healthcare providers. For instance, a newly proposed patient access and interoperability rule “will allow CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) to disclose providers participating in “information blocking,” or those who are limiting the availability, disclosure, and use of electronic health information.”  With easy patient access to EHR (electronic health records) becoming an issue of compliance, cost-efficient and legally compliant modes of file upload, transmission, and access become the basis of a nimble and reliable virtual care program.

Choosing the Best Medical Imaging Compression Software

A major issue frustrating the process of deploying remote and mobile health care applications is the nature of medical imaging documents and the industry requirements for image quality preservation. Faced with challenges of maintaining file quality for patients’ crucial image scans, IT professionals might be dissuaded from relying on a compression software that degrades image quality.

For instance, telehealth professionals might refuse to consider lossy compression, a method of data compression that reconstructs the original data approximately. With lossy compression, image file sizes can be drastically reduced—but at risk of significant image quality degradation. An article from BMC Medical Imaging hazards that only modest degrees of lossy JPEG compression can be applied to medical images, “while leaving the images indistinguishable from the original.” For clinical organizations with stringent regulations on record keeping, this might strike lossy compression out as an option. This choice to maintain quality over efficiency leaves telehealth organizations with burdensome server expenses, strain on bandwidth and storage costs, and slowed processes from bloated file sizes. Delayed patient access due to bottlenecked data transmission results in penalizations from noncompliance, impeded diagnoses, and client dissatisfaction.

Lossless Compression: Increased Efficiency and Client-side Impact

As an alternative to lossy compression, lossless compression produces a compressed image file exactly identical to its initial scan. The process achieves file size reduction alongside a guaranteed preservation of image quality. Lossless compression is an intuitive solution expediting the transition to paperless communications. Adding to the cost efficiencies and greater access to health records through digitization, lossless compression circumvents issues of image degradation. Especially for clinical organizations with large repositories of scanned documents and bloated image files, lossless compression can drastically lighten server load and reduce paid storage space in third-party cloud applications and CRMs, and drive faster upload, download, and circulation of key medical images.

A robust lossless image compressor like PDF Compressor offers both speed and accuracy in workflows involving scanned medical images: faster retrieval and usage of image files, reduced network bandwidth consumption and storage costs, and minimized lag in both wireless and web display. Clients can, for instance, more quickly download and thumb through their medical image documents. Medical charts and images can be circulated internally for analysis or for second interpretations cost-effectively. Data-rich image attachments can be sent through email without fear of hitting maximum image attachment capacity or slowing down correspondence as often. Patients can be treated and diagnosed with greater efficiency and with an upheld degree of accuracy. PDF Compressor’s lossless compression eases crucial processes of data transmission, upload, and analysis in telemedicine that would otherwise be hindered by bloated image files.

If you’re looking to ensure efficient performance while maintaining EHR compliance for your telehealth platforms, get started with a free trial of PDF Compressor.

Scanning and paper-based processes generate high costs from re-keying data, manual data search, and the risk of lost or inaccessible documents causing legal compliance issues. Foxit’s brand new Maestro Server OCR 8.0 is here for all your high-volume document scanning and OCR needs. Maestro automates the OCR processing for enterprises, replacing manual document processing with fast, cost-efficient operations. Here’s a rundown of the features included in the update:

Even Greater OCR Accuracy

Maestro uses OCR technology to efficiently convert scanned paper and image documents into text-searchable PDF files. Already equipped with the ability to accurately recognize text in difficult situations such as with low-contrast or multi-directional text, using Maestro Server OCR is more accurate than competitive solutions and protects your processes from human error inherent in manual processing. The 8.0 update offers improved OCR recognition for word splits over line breaks, helping to reduce errors even further.

Advanced Auto-Tagging

Document accessibility is important to ensure your files can be read by people of all abilities. For screen readers and other assistive technologies to function properly, documents need text layer data. Maestro’s automated OCR automatically tags unstructured documents, to create more accessible PDF files and help you toward compliance with ADA, 508, and PDF/UA standards.

Touchless OCR

The beauty of automated processing is that it significantly cuts down on manual labor costs. Our new Maestro Server OCR 8.0 takes it a step further, as it can now be run as an unattended Windows Service, giving you more flexible options for running the software and freeing time to work on core business projects in the meantime. The software automatically processes files with OCR and drops them off in the correct folders, no supervision needed.

How to Upgrade to Maestro 8.0

Check for updates on your current Maestro program to upgrade to 8.0. New customers can contact us at sales@cvisiontech.com to get started with a free trial.

The digital age has arrived for corporate data storage, with the reliability and convenience of digital archiving outweighing paper record-keeping for most types of files. But transforming your physical records into a digital format may seem like a daunting task. A long-tenured organization may have decades of paper documents taking up space in filing cabinets, and companies of any age may accumulate new papers, such as receipts and invoices.

Scanning brings your organization's archives into the modern era of digital document storage, but there's more than one way to process and format scanned documents. If you simply scan in printed documents as flat image files, the resulting collection of data will take up a large amount of digital storage space, and it will be impossible to search for text within those records. This is where the second stage of an effective digitization process comes in: optical character recognition (OCR) software.

CVISION's OCR engine, part of PDF Compressor, is a powerful complement to document scanning, allowing you to create an archive of searchable PDF files, compressed to small file sizes and compatible with common viewer programs. Digitizing information from physical records in a functional format such as PDF lets your organization reap the full benefits of modernized data storage.

What an OCR Engine Can Accomplish for Your Company

Using OCR-based PDF conversion in your data scanning process adds value by generating text-searchable PDFs instead of saving the image files generated straight from a scanner. A quick and easy keyword search can bring up essential information from documents that have had their text identified by OCR. Sorting through flat images can take hours of extra employee time as workers open each document and visually skim its contents.

Heavily automated OCR is a better way to manage this process than trusting manual data entry. Organizations that call upon their workers to type in information from papers instead of scanning and converting may end up with searchable digital files in the end, but the amount of labor that goes into the process will be far larger.

Using a less sophisticated OCR system, one that lacks automation and requires employees to manually select each file for conversion, is a better but still not optimal option. The PDF Compressor OCR engine's ability to watch particular folders for new image files enables employees to set up a scanning process and let it automatically run rather than triggering each conversion by hand. Using a Batch OCR command allows workers to convert large document repositories of scanned documents at once, at a rate of approximately five pages per second.

Accuracy and Effectiveness of OCR

Speed and automation are valuable components of an OCR solution and scanning in general, but accuracy is the crux of the process. If an OCR algorithm cannot accurately detect the text in a particular document, it won't live up to its potential value. This is why PDF Compressor's OCR engine is designed for maximum accuracy.

The software can detect words in circumstances that may stop other OCR solutions from functioning, such as when documents are captured in low resolution. It can also detect multidirectional text, or text in colors other than black letters on a white background. When text is interrupted by extraneous lines or otherwise broken up, less powerful OCR tools may miss it. This is why it's important to select a top-quality OCR-enabled system instead of settling for just any offering on the market. PDF Compressor's auto-rotation, despeckling, resampling and foreground-background separation capabilities put it in the top rank of OCR options.

Using an OCR engine that is actively looking for words in a particular language is another way to ensure it will accurately find and convert all the text present within a scanned image. To this end, PDF Compressor's OCR engine supports 118 languages from all corners of the world.

Additional Uses for PDF Compressor

PDF Compressor isn't just for scanned files, and the latest release can provide consistent PDF conversion for born-digital documents including Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, emails, HTML and more. When these files already have digitally readable text, PDF Compressor knows not to run OCR, carrying over the digital data as is. When working with "flat" files such as images, the OCR takes effect and creates searchable text.

If your primary need is a long-term archive, you can convert files into the PDF/A format. This variant of PDF is optimized for accurate data retention and long-standing compatibility. All new PDF readers are able to open PDF/A files, meaning you won't have to search for an esoteric viewing software to access your archived content in the future.

Installing and Using OCR

It's easy to buy and install PDF Compressor, selecting a model that suits your company's usage plans and getting your team to work on conversion projects quickly. Licensing models include:

• The one-time volume pack, best for when you're converting a single group of documents and billed by number of pages processed.
• An annual volume plan, based on the number of pages you scan in any year and suitable for companies that will need ongoing scanning services.
• The enterprise unlimited model, which has no upper volume maximum and is billed by the number of cores you'll use for conversion.

The software, for Windows 7 or later, requires a 2GHz CPU, 1 GB free on a hard drive, a minimum of 1 GB RAM (2 GB is recommended), as well as the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.2. It's simple to view an online demo of the system and envision how it will help your company.

What is a Hybrid Record?

A hybrid document or hybrid record is a file whose data is stored in multiple file formats within the same document. An example of a hybrid document is a contract in an electronically generated PDF format that contains a scanned image of the signature page, or an image-PDF with a CSV file embedded within the document. Hybrid records function essentially as container files; they carry data in myriad formats through one document, and act as vehicles for information. A useful way of framing hybrid documents is defining them as a specific form of a metafile, a file format capable of storing multiple types of data.

Hybrid PDFs and ISO Specifications

A commonly-used metafile format is PDF/A, which meets industry standards in universal archiving and document accessibility. PDF/A has nuanced file embedding compatibilities that should be addressed if you are considering its usage as a hybrid document. While PDF/A-2 brought specifications that allowed for embedding of only valid PDF/A files, the addition of PDF/A-3 permits embedding of any file type. Supported file types include CAD, CSV, XML, and image files. This ISO specification allows specifically the form of PDF/A-3 to serve as a hybrid document.

Industries Adopting Hybrid Records

The hybrid record as a file format is commonly deployed across many industries. For instance, XML files are often attached within PDF files for the sake of electronic invoicing and billing; CSV files are embedded within financial documents; and CAD drawings are placed within PDFs for the manufacturing and engineering industries. A salient specific usage of hybrid documents can be found in the health industry: many healthcare institutions are pivoting to rely on “hybrid health records,” or HHRs. As collations of electronic health records (EHR) and paper charts from scanned document images, the HHR is easing the transformation to paperless, digitally-dominant workflows in the medical industry. Hybrid health records help to alleviate the costs of physical paper storage, to conveniently assemble image-based data within one document, and to aid in the transition to paperless document management.

Optimizing Document Capture Processes for Hybrid Records

The main boon of creating, using, and distributing hybrid documents is expediency. As a compound file format, multiple streams of data can be contained within one document file. However, merging file types does come with a trade-off: it can be difficult to process image and electronic components together without support from the right capture software, which can be designed to only handle image documents such as scanned paper. Being unable to process the electronic components with the image portions of a hybrid record slows down document processes, adds manual exception handling expenses to your bottom line, and disrupts workflows. An ideal document capture software should rely upon built-in support for an array of file types to contain hybrid document processes within a singular workflow. PDF Compressor, for instance, comes equipped with automatic processing support for many input file types, like XFA PDF forms and hybrid PDFs. Expanded input file type compatibility reduces time spent manually processing document types that otherwise cannot be ingested by many capture solutions, and enables faster business workflows and less missed revenue from document-based transactions.

Data extraction and analytics, archiving, and forms processing of hybrid documents are only as accurate as the data inputted into them. A conversion software will often rasterize all images regardless of its source. In the process, these solutions will flatten text to image and re-OCR already indexable text from digital-born documents—wasting time unnecessarily, decreasing performance, and exposing the hybrid record to inaccuracy from re-recognition errors. PDF Compressor is designed to uniquely discern pre-existing text layers from born-digital documents, and automatically bypass the OCR phase for these portions of text. Unattended auto detection of electronically-produced text relieves your company of manual effort, special coding, or expensive professional services for sorting and laboriously separating born-digital files from image documents.

Especially useful for hybrid documents with born-digital text content, PDF Compressor mitigates any risks of inaccurate OCR and allows these documents to be properly utilized as data-rich assets. PDF Compressor offers intuitive document capture for hybrid documents, and helps organizations like yours achieve efficient and precise document processes.

How can your organization achieve greater efficiency in your hybrid document processes? Start your free trial of our PDF Compressor today!

Archiving digital documents securely and reliably is one of the challenges that has increased in prominence in recent years as companies have come to rely on advanced technology. This need applies to organizations that generate large amounts of born-digital content, as well as those that are scanning and preserving information initially printed on paper, from invoices to transcripts and more.

When archiving documents in digital form, companies must ensure those documents are still accessible through document management software, no matter how long they are stored. This means these organizations should go beyond standard file conversion and embrace formats such as PDF/A, which is intended to be a future-proof form of PDF document. This specialized approach to document storage exceeds the capabilities of both physical retention and standard digital methods to give companies archives they can count on for years to come.

Entering a New Era of Archiving

For years, microfiche and paper documents have been the standard methods of archiving information. Companies' files take up rooms full of filing cabinets, and searching for a particular file means physically going through drawers, hoping the record has been placed in the right location. Record managers at companies of all kinds shouldn't let inertia set in regarding their best practices. Today, embracing a digital archiving solution infuses new convenience into archival processes.

When documents are placed into an archive, it's never clear exactly when they'll be needed or for what purpose. Records managers should maximize their chances of finding information with a document management solution, no matter how large the archive becomes or how many other elements of the company's processes change around them. Furthermore, digital documents can be immediately emailed anywhere in the world when requested. In an era of increasingly global organizations, easy file sharing is a high-priority feature.

Digital files that are easy to search for are especially valuable in situations when records managers leave the business. Those employees' successors have a much better chance of finding old files if those documents have been stored in a standardized digital format then if they had been placed in a room full of inconsistently labeled filing cabinets.

As businesses increasingly embrace digital files for every area of business, archiving information digitally will become more natural. While some organizations may still be required to keep physical archives for legal archiving compliance reasons, electronic archives are staking their claim as the practical choice for everyday use.

Embracing the PDF/A Format

Archiving responsibly doesn't just mean scanning and saving documents. Companies should ensure they are converting those files into a standardized format, one designed with archiving in mind. This means using PDF/A, which is the recommended format of both the Association of Records Management and Administrators and the National Archives and Records Administration.

As for the technical details of the PDF/A format, the PDF Association points to a lack of dynamic elements. PDF/A files don't look outside of themselves to gather information about fonts, colors or images. Instead, they are preserved as-is at the time of their creation and look exactly the same to every user that accesses them, for however long they exist. This helps employees in different locations verify information, as well as makes certain future readers will see identical content to present-day viewers.

PDF/A also differs from the basic PDF in that it is guaranteed to work with all relevant software: The PDF/A standard is designed to make files accessible by any future PDF readers, which means people will always have a simple way to read the data, with no compatibility problems based on different encoding and reading software. The PDF Association pointed out that the ISO standard calls for all PDF viewers to be compatible with all versions of PDF/A, meaning that even if new revisions are made, files created with PDF/A in the past will always be accessible through standard PDF software.

PDF/A files are text-searchable, provided companies have taken the proper steps at the time the documents are created. The PDF Association noted that when converting born-digital documents such as standard PDFs to PDF/A, there is generally no extra action needed to make the text searchable. When scanning physical documents to PDF, records managers should use optical character recognition (OCR) to ensure the text is preserved in a searchable digital format.

Convert files to PDF/A with PDF Compressor - Free Trial

Learning the Specifics: Types of Archival PDFs

There are several types of PDF/A, each optimal for a specific kind of content. The levels of PDF/A are designated a, b and u. The following are the key differences between these subtypes.

PDF/A Level b

This is the basic type of PDF/A, and has been the default since the early days of the standard. Level b doesn't have some of the accessibility features encoded in other types of PDF/A. Files preserved this way will display exactly the same, no matter where and when they are accessed. However, the digital text within these documents may not be saved with its initial reading order and logical structure intact.

PDF/A Level u

The PDF/A Level u format was introduced in 2011 as part of the PDF/A-2 standard, and files saved this way area easier to index. All the text within these files must be preset in the Unicode library, meaning every piece of text will be searchable and indexable. When files are converted from physical scanned documents and made text-searchable via OCR, it can pay to save them as PDF/A Level u, ensuring the newly converted text is searchable in the future.

PDF/A level a

Level a is predicated on greater accessibility than other types of archival PDF. These documents have specified language information and are saved in hierarchical structures. Text spans are tagged, and all images and symbols within have descriptive text. As with Level u, text is matched with Unicode characters. These added layers of detail are especially useful if users with visual disabilities are searching through or reading the documents, as all their visual elements are preserved in formats that can be converted into spoken text with text-to-speech software.

Committing to Digital Archives

There's no telling how far in the future, or where in the world, a company will need to access its archived documents. Archives should be functional parts of an organization, ready to provide data at a moment's notice, no matter how much time has passed. Using the PDF/A format allows companies to directly address future-proofing and searchability. Whether the documents were born digital or come from paper files, they'll thrive in a specifically designed digital archive.

Document digitization software tools such as PDF Compressor Version 8 deliver access to this new form of archiving, making long-term data storage an easy task that won't get in the way of everyday business processes. Scanned documents are made text-searchable through OCR, while born-digital content from emails and HTML documents to Microsoft Office files is quickly turned into archival PDFs. Learn more about document conversion today.