The Future of Documents

Hands on experience of someone that really tried going paperless – which proves to not be so easy, but can work if you are really motivated.

Stephen Shankland at CNET’s DeepTech tells us about the barriers, tips, but also satisfactions of going paperless – or more precisely, less paper. Among the lessons learnt:

• Going paperless is a significant undertaking and should not be taken lightly, start small then grow gradually; 
• It needs a well-proven standard for your electronic archives, but also  good practices for longer-term preservation such as backup.
• At the same time, start moving some of your day-forward incoming paper flow to full digital (e.g. electronic bank statements)
• Some of these physical artifacts just cannot be totally replaced by a digital version.

The only area where I don’t fully agree with Stephen is on how much indexing is required when creating these document archives. Stephen assumes (rightly or wrongly) that search techniques will improve over time and make initial indexing or categorizaton obsolete, allowing easy search through that e-clutter. I would not be so sure about that, so I personally use searchable PDFs for all of my paper documents, and try to add metadata, tags or categorization to help later retrieval based on the content. Even though 10 years from now OCR might be close to error-proof, Finding these “statement” images in the first place might be a challenge without prior indexing – and, even worse, searching the content of pictures might still be a challenge.

Anyway, it’s always good to hear and learn from someone that went through a Near Paperless Experience

Good coverage by CNET.com on Your e-health future. It touches upon some of the rationales for moving Medical Records to Electronic formats – but also alludes to the major barriers, including cost, complexity, privacy, and security (and less obvious ones, such as the legal use of digital health records by insurance companies to deny membership or hike prices beyond affordability for those with existing medical conditions), while talking about the trends and regulations that affect this trend.

Interesting reading that I’ll let you discover by yourself, but in my opinion one of the main point is the mention that the advantages of electronic medical records come only if older paper records are scanned or incorporated into the new system.

This is a laborious, expensive and error-prone process, which requires technologies like Automatic Classification, Intelligent Extraction, and other advanced technologies that can extract information from this unstructured set of information. And, scanning this huge backlog of information should not be improvised - can I scan all of those records at once? Or should I scan a patient record only in preparation of an appointment, on-demand? What about all this paper trail that we’ll continue generating until Medical Records become fully electronic?  Should I use decentralized scanning, bulk scanning, or a mix of both? TYhis can of strategy is best defined with an expert in document management, who can put you on the path to the Less Paper medical office.

The ECM experts panel on “The Reality of going Paperless” at AIIM 2009 is now available as podcast.

Listen to expert advice on deciding when you really need paper, setting achievable “Less Paper” goals, identifying barriers to paperless deployments, and a many other interesting topics – click here to listen to the whole podcast.

For those of you interested in the availability of Transient / Erasable paper, check out this whattheythink.com interview of Maggie Ochs, Xerox Worldwide Marketing and Planning for Paper and Media, as she discusses Erasable (aka Transient) Paper, but also High-Yield paper.

Wish it was a bit more precise on availability dates, but still is worth listening to.

Interesting feedback on the  AIIM panel discussion on the paperless office . Ron Miller from Fierce Content Management describes his attendance of this panel discussion, hosted by Docushare, at the occasion of the launch of the Docushare Virtual Filing Cabinet.

The discussion mainly went along an interesting divide between content in two areas: coming from outside (customers, providers, 3rd parties) and internal content. As the discussion went, participants admitted the first area cannot be turned to “paperless” overnight – it needs to take into account the various parties’ constraints. I would add that in most cases, it all comes down to the lowest common denominator for communication between the various parties – which often ends up being paper.

Going paperless is easier in house – at least in theory. However, just like at my Document 2.0 at Office 2.0 panel, a few speakers admitted they still liked their hard copy after the ice broke. And, as the author concludes, moving your paper documents into digital format is only part of the problem. After your documents are scanned, , move the digital version of your documents around, index them - not to mention storage requirements. That’s what ECM is about. However, ECM does not take care of the extraction of all the structured content you have on those documents, for categorisation, indexing, or intelligent analysis…

 Anyway, lots of great debate around our favourite medium – which we love to hate.

 The distinction in particular

Hosted by Docushare

Business Week has a very interesting article on the benefits of less paper, or even paperless, in the Health Industry. Kaiser Permanente is cited as a role model for removing paper out of their offices, and moving towards eHealth records.

Interestingly enough, cost is not necessarily the main driver, as they admit that “there is unknown, if any, cost savings benefits”. However, other benefits accrue through improved productivity, and less redundant operations because of informaiton retained in paper records. However, at the end of the day, these will translate into cost savings anyway, as well as a more environmental-friendly behaviour. Not to mention improved quality of service – invaluable to the patient, with more up-to-date information.

Unfortunately, those players that have to make the biggest investments (small practices of doctors) are not the ones that reap most of those benefits – most typically the patient, hospital, health plan, and pharmacists. The up-front cost of establishing a eHealth record for small practices is still quite prohibitive, and the disruption in their work processes is quite significant at first. Only 4% of physicians have a comprehensive system in place, and another 13% use basic electronic system.

Even doctors in hospitals have a steep learning curve – only capable to receive half their normal patient load for the first two weeks, because of disruptions due to the electronic system . But this gets back to normal after a few weeks, usually.

The Health industry, like many others, can really benefit from a Less Paper strategy -  also productivity improvements, quality of service, and many other benefits – which eventually turn into significant cost reductions. This is usually best achieved by getting help from an expert – capable of re-engineering your business processes, and minimizing disruption.

Are you drowning in paper documents? Want to go paperless, or at least “less paper”, and move all of these documents into the electronic world? But you want to make sure these documents are safely stored on a central ECM system with all of its benefits: indexing, metadata, backed up, and securely accessible 24hrs a day?

Docushare Virtual Filing Cabinet can help you. This new offering combines archival software, a high-speed scanner, and a new Docushare 6.5 version. But, probably even more important, it includes some consulting to help you get started, analyse your existing file cabinet organization, and set up your electronic system.

Besides the easy and secure access and distribution, this sort of technology helps you go green, save on costs, and claim storage space back.

Sounds interesting? For more information, check this short video out by clicking the image below.

An interesting IDC report on How Generation Y works with paper and Electronic Documents in the Office.

Among the key conclusions: this workforce under 30 years old still see paper continue to play a critical role in many everyday business processes. Although they do not see paper disappearing overnight, they are moving fast towards the Less Paper office - although this is driven more by their “green” and environmental consciousness than technology savviness.

Other interesting insights include how document length or formats impact the preferred document form, how Gen Y perceives faxing and scanning, and where electronic and paper have the respondents’ preference.

Although quite focused on hardcopy vendors, this report is the first one of a very promising IDC series on “The Future of Print”, and can be ordered here.

As we know, the “Less Paper Office“ is mainly about printing less, but does include some exceptions or “micro trends”. Printing higher-quality, personalized, color documents is one of those -as it allows maximum impact for your printed document. This includes brochures, transpromo statements, leaflets, or cards. These documents however require more preparation, and generate more defects, as the final document, once printed, often does not quite match the electronic version - wrong colors, poor assembly, or other unpleasant side-effects, which make the final document unusable – and waste paper and money.

Xerox’s Research Centre Webster is working on a number of technologies to address these problems. One “cool” technology is 3-D Document Visualisation, which lets the user “preview” the final print result in 3-D, allowing her to test various finishing options, such as folds, gloss, binding, texture, and many other parameters.

(For those of you who cannot see the video embedded here, please follow this link)

This should expedite the review and approval process for quality color prints. This process, according to InfoTrends, can be six times more expensive than the actual printing of the document. Not to mention, of course, the “green” and sustainability consequences: achieving the desired look and feel for the final document are a great step towards one more step towards the Less Paper Office.

Does Generation Y (especially college students) want to get rid of paper altogether, as the Economist article(and many other studies) suggest? Maybe not, after all.

This article on Wired Campus actually suggests the contrary, actually: “The survey showed that students feel strongly about the printed word. About 75 percent of those surveyed said they prefer a printed textbook over an electronic one. And 60 percent said that even if a free digital copy were available, they would still pay for a low-cost print version.”

The Less Paper office is a driven by mix of complex, often conflicting trends…