Technical FAQs for "ImageGear"
For many years, the legal industry proved resistant to the changes that were pushing other organizations toward digital transformation. Although the serious shocks of the 2008 financial crisis were not enough to spark a revolution in LegalTech automation, they did at least get many firms to start thinking differently about how they deployed technology.
After enduring the disruption of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, firms are finally implementing the software applications that will help them to deliver legal services far more effectively. In order to understand what’s driving today’s LegalTech trends, it’s important to first recognize why changes that didn’t take place in 2008 are happening now.
Why 2020 Differs From 2008
The legal industry was not spared the impacts of the 2008 financial crisis. Rather than reassessing their fundamental business model, most firms reacted to the recession by laying off personnel. According to the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), nine percent of US associates lost their jobs over a nine month period between 2009 and 2010.
While this strategy managed to protect profits in the short term, it had a negative impact on their talent pipelines in the long run. More importantly, firms also had little immediate incentive to rethink their business processes. Reducing personnel and increasing rates allowed them to meet their immediate revenue goals, and the basic structure of delivering legal services remained mostly unchanged. And, to be fair, many LegalTech automation platforms were not yet mature enough at that time to deliver clear value, especially when compared to the costs of implementation.
The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has presented firms with a very different set of conditions. Almost every sector was impacted and it was not immediately clear how long the disruption would last. Social distancing requirements made it all but impossible for attorneys to meet with clients in person. After the initial wave of salary cuts and furloughs, firms were forced to think about how they could continue to deliver services in the midst of a pandemic.
Customer expectations have also changed dramatically since 2008. Legal clients expect faster, more efficient services delivered at a competitive price point. In order to grow revenue beyond 2020, firms will need to reorient themselves to do more with less, adopting the technology infrastructure that allows them to build more efficient processes and automate low value tasks so partners and associates can focus on other areas.
Post-2020 LegalTech Trends
Historically, the business model of most legal firms focused on immediate priorities and a reactive demand model that proved resistant to automation and efficiency. Since firms tend to look to metrics like PEP (Profit per Partner) to judge the health of the business, investing in process-oriented technology that would enable support staff to work more efficiently was rarely appealing. That’s because such investments would eat into short-term profits without offering a clear benefit in the future.
But those benefits had very real potential, especially for firms and legal departments willing to look at different, less partner-driven business models that put more emphasis on customer-centric services. The firms that made the difficult decision to invest in LegalTech automation early now find themselves in a better position to thrive in a post-2020 landscape than competitors who were slower to adopt.
While premier “big law” firms will likely continue to offer high-value legal work to clients that require more specialized, strategic services, other firms and departments will be in an ideal position to capitalize on the type of work that benefits more from LegalTech automation. Specifically, they can leverage technology to meet known demand, or the day-to-day low to mid-level legal services that many customers expect and budget for. This is the type of work where efficient processes and automation make it possible for firms to take on more work and quickly scale their operations. It’s also a more customer-centric approach that acknowledges the ability to deliver legal services swiftly and cost-effectively will be a tremendous competitive advantage in the years ahead.
A Second Chance at Digital Transformation
Moments of crisis and disruption typically provide organizations with the opportunity to innovate and rethink their approach to how they do business. The legal industry, however, largely failed to adapt significantly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Firms were often unwilling to change their processes or invest in new technology solutions, which makes it even more vital for them to adapt in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In some respects, the industry is getting a second chance to undergo true digital transformation. Due to the unique circumstances of the 2020 downturn, there is every reason to expect that the demand for legal services will grow substantially in 2021 and beyond. From cases and contracts that could not be resolved during the pandemic to a broad range of lawsuits related to COVID-19, legal organizations will need to put the right digital tools in place to handle caseloads efficiently.
Stay Ahead of LegalTech Trends with Accusoft Integrations
In order to keep pace with rapidly developing LegalTech trends, developers need to be able to build versatile and reliable software that they can bring to market quickly. Building innovative tools to facilitate contract negotiation and eDiscovery is challenging enough without also creating the content processing and conversion capabilities that facilitate them. That’s why LegalTech development teams under resource and time constraints frequently turn to specialized integrations that allow them to add essential features without pulling their attention away from their core area of focus. This helps them get their products to market faster to keep their customers ahead of the latest LegalTech trends.
Accusoft’s collection of powerful SDK and API integrations allows developers to build the features they need on their own terms. For instance, PrizmDoc Editor’s document assembly capabilities allow firms to automate the contract creation and editing process to minimize human error and boost efficiency. PrizmDoc Viewer’s conversion, annotation, and redaction features make it an ideal fit for eDiscovery workflows that require high levels of flexibility and security. And when it comes to managing different types of documents and files throughout the legal process, having an image processing SDK like ImageGear that can convert, compress, and OCR a broad range of file types can transform a LegalTech application into a content management powerhouse.
To learn more about how Accusoft’s collection of processing solutions can help your team meet today’s LegalTech automation challenges, talk to one of our industry specialists.
The last twelve months have seen an unprecedented shift in the way organizations and customers are utilizing digital services. According to data gathered by McKinsey in 2020, digital adoption made roughly five years worth of progress in a span of eight weeks at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this massive shift impacted almost every industry, the government sector in particular faced tremendous disruption as its legacy systems struggled to keep pace with demand.
Many of the changes in the way people access government services are likely to remain in place even after the threat of the pandemic recedes, which creates a huge opportunity for software developers specializing in GovTech applications. A closer look at GovTech trends for 2021 provides some insight into those opportunities.
5 Key GovTech Trends to Watch in 2021
1. Remote Functionality
Government agencies had to fundamentally rethink the workplace in response to the pandemic. Non-essential personnel transitioned to working remotely whenever possible, but this move created a number of challenges in terms of collaboration and security. Employees still need to be able to view, edit, and share files without compromising privacy or creating version confusion. All too often, remote workers resort to ad hoc solutions involving third party programs and conventional email, all of which make it incredibly difficult for an organization to maintain control over its essential files. GovTech developers can address these challenges directly by building software that facilitates remote collaboration entirely within a secure application.
2. Doing More with Less
One of the downstream consequences of social distancing restrictions and stay at home orders has been the erosion of sales tax revenue at the state and local level. While the impacts have not been as catastrophic as originally feared, many states are still facing significant budget shortfalls despite making deep spending cuts. The pressure will be on to find GovTech solutions that are easy to implement, use, and maintain. Efficiency and flexibility will continue to be important considerations as state and municipal governments seek out platforms that can address multiple needs and allow them to eliminate costly redundancies.
3. Shift to Digital
When government offices were forced to shut their doors in the early days of the pandemic, they had to scramble to find ways to deliver services digitally. This was especially difficult for agencies relying on legacy infrastructure and outdated software, but the transition to digital is unlikely to slow down anytime soon now that it’s underway. According to a recent study, 61 percent of government officials surveyed believe that the pandemic has accelerated their digital transformation goals, while 75 percent claim that their agency is pushing to offer even more services digitally. That will mean plenty of opportunity for innovative GovTech developers that can provide the automation and data management tools governments need to bring their services into the 21st century.
4. Fight for Privacy
Government agencies sit upon massive amounts of private data that must be kept secure at all costs. From personally identifiable information like Social Security Numbers to contracts and applications that contain confidential business data and vital trade secrets, governments have a responsibility to protect sensitive data at all times. They need systems and software that not only keeps files safely within the secure confines of an application, but also provides the redaction capabilities that allow agencies to comply with information requests. By designing platforms that promote transparency while also protecting privacy, GovTech developers can play an important role in building trust between government and citizens.
5. Citizen-Centric Experience
The combination of evolving public expectations and demographic change was rapidly reshaping the delivery of government services even before the pandemic. In a global survey conducted in late 2019, Accenture found that 50 percent of respondents believed that requests to an agency could be resolved faster with the use of AI assistants or chatbots and that a transition to 24/7 access to government services would be greatly beneficial. Respondents also wanted easier access to their personal information (74 percent), faster response times (73 percent), and greater visibility into the status of their queries and applications (64 percent). Younger citizens accustomed to customer-centric experiences are further shifting expectations of what services the government should be able to offer digitally. It will fall to GovTech developers to design applications that connect citizens to their government and streamline processes that have long relied upon inefficient manual practices and direct physical interactions.
Enhance Your GovTech Application with Accusoft Solutions
Working with the government sector presents a number of challenges to even seasoned developers. From meeting complex compliance and privacy requirements to managing a dizzying range of document types, building and implementing an effective solution takes a great deal of time and development resources.
One of the easiest ways to speed up that process is by incorporating proven functionality into an application with SDKs or APIs. Accusoft’s collection of software integrations helps GovTech developers get to market faster by providing reliable and government-ready content processing features.
- PrizmDoc Viewer: A powerful HTML5 viewer with annotation and redaction capabilities, PrizmDoc Viewer makes it easy to view, edit, and manage public records, contracts, and even more sensitive documents all within a secure GovTech application.
- ImageGear: With ImageGear’s extensive image processing, conversion, and compression features behind them, GovTech applications can easily improve document workflows, consolidate information, and meet government archiving standards (thanks to PDF/A support).
- FormSuite: Processing government forms can quickly overwhelm an application if it doesn’t have the capabilities to handle multiple form types or clean up document images. FormSuite for Structured Forms is a collection of forms processing SDKs that helps GovTech applications quickly sort and extract data from structured forms for superior speed and accuracy.
As GovTech trends continue to accelerate in 2021, developers need partners they can trust to provide secure, reliable functionality to their applications so they can focus their efforts on building software that meets the exacting needs of the government sector. Learn more about how Accusoft can fulfill that role and elevate the potential of GovTech applications.
Having the right technology in place is essential for healthcare organizations seeking to deliver better patient outcomes. That’s why medical technology developers are working hard to build the next generation of software tools that will help medical professionals to deliver care more effectively.
Annotation features provide a number of benefits in these ongoing efforts. Although typically associated with editing and workplace collaboration, medical annotations also have a very different and very specific role when it comes to diagnostic imaging and patient health records.
Enhancing Healthcare Collaboration with Annotations
One of the most straightforward use cases for medical annotation is communicating important information regarding diagnostic images. As images like MRIs and X-rays are passed back and forth between providers, radiologists, technicians, and clinicians, the ability to add comments and point out important details greatly reduces the chance of confusion or of some critical detail being overlooked.
The challenge in these cases, however, is to annotate images and documents without altering the integrity of the original files. This requires healthcare technology developers to build solutions that can retain an unaltered version of the file even as multiple collaborators view and make comments.
Medical Annotation and Machine Learning
Healthcare solutions are rapidly incorporating sophisticated machine learning tools to analyze large quantities of data and make a quick, accurate diagnosis of conditions. Before these powerful tools can perform that diagnostic work, they need to be properly trained to know what they’re looking for, especially when it comes to very nuanced differences between scanned images and seemingly unrelated details in patient records.
By using annotation tools, medical technology specialists can provide excellent guidance for machine learning development. An MRI scan, for instance, contains so much information that an AI-driven program isn’t going to know what to look for unless the key elements are called out with annotations that indicate certain parts of the image or provide comments about noteworthy aspects.
The DICOM Dilemma
While many software integrations allow developers to incorporate annotation tools for common file formats like PDF and JPEG, the healthcare sector presents a unique challenge in the form of DICOM files. This industry-specific format contains both images and important metadata identifiers that provide information about the image itself and the patient in question. While there are ways to extract images from DICOM files and convert them into a more manageable format, doing so could endanger compliance status or permanently degrade the image quality.
Developers working on healthcare technology solutions need to make sure they can not only deliver annotation tools, but also the ability to add annotations to DICOM files without altering the source file itself.
Mastering Medical Annotation with ImageGear Medical
ImageGear Medical provides a broad range of XML-based annotation features that allows healthcare software developers to implement UI elements for marking up both images and documents. Since this powerful imaging SDK also gives users the ability to create and view DICOM files, it can quickly enhance the functionality of medical applications to enhance collaboration and ensure diagnostic accuracy.
Once integrated into an application with a viewing UI, ImageGear Medical supports several commonly-utilized annotation marks that makes it easy for users to highlight certain aspects of an image, comment on them, and even cover up some elements using filled-in graphical objects. Annotations can also be grouped in layers to make them easier to manage and distinguish from one another.
ImageGear Medical annotation objects for DICOM include:
- Text: Adds descriptive text using a variety of fonts, colors, and sizes. Opacity can be adjusted and the text object can appear with or without a border.
- Point: Places a coordinate point on the image or document, which can be used to support other annotation marks.
- Polyline: A series of connected straight lines formed by dragging and clicking a mouse or pointer.
- Curve: Used for creating spline curve marks. Users can select multiple vertices and tensions when creating curves.
- Ellipse: A circular outline mark that can be used to indicate important elements of an image or document. When filled, it can also cover up areas of the image.
- Polygon: Like the ellipse, it can be filled or unfilled and is typically deployed to cover or highlight some aspect of an image or document. Polygons are especially useful for medical annotation because they can capture more lines and angles than simple rectangles or circles.
In order to maintain the integrity of the original image, ImageGear Medical stores annotations as a separate file that is overlaid upon the image during display. While annotations can be merged, or “burned in” the file, keeping them separate ensures that the original image itself is not altered directly. This is incredibly important when it comes to DICOM files, which often need to be kept on file for baseline comparisons on a future diagnosis.
Enhance Healthcare Flexibility with ImageGear Medical
Annotations and DICOM viewing support are just the beginning of ImageGear Medical’s expansive feature set. It also provides advanced filtering tools for sharpening and smoothing as well as image cleanup functions like despeckling, noise removal, and deskewing. With support for several dozen medical image and document formats, ImageGear Medical can easily convert files into easy-to-manage formats and compress files for efficient storage.
Available for .NET and C/C++ environments, ImageGear Medical can turn your healthcare application into a powerful annotation platform with full support for DICOM files. Start your free trial of this powerful SDK to discover first-hand how it can empower your medical annotation solution.
Although PDFs are one of the most common document types in use today, not every PDF file is identical. A document with multiple layers, annotations, or editable form fields can create significant challenges for an application, especially when it comes to viewing, printing, and OCR reading. One of the most effective ways of dealing with these PDFs is to use powerful digital tools that “flatten” the document to remove unseen or unnecessary information to reduce the overall complexity of the file.
What Is PDF Flattening?
Flattening can be used to refer to a number of different processes, but in principle, they all accomplish the same goal of merging distinct elements of the document. A few example of flattening include:
- Making interactive form elements non-fillable and static.
- Burning annotations into the document to make them native text.
- Combining multiple layers of text or images into a single layer, eliminating any non-visible elements.
3 Reasons to Flatten PDFs
There are numerous reasons why an end user may wish to flatten a PDF document, but they usually fall under one of three broad categories.
1. Better Security
Forms often contain valuable information, especially when it comes to financial, insurance, or government forms. If a PDF with editable forms were to fall into the wrong hands, someone could easily alter the information contained in the form to commit fraud or falsify data. By flattening the forms, the entries become a static element of the document and cannot be altered any further. By building applications with the ability to flatten PDF forms, developers can help organizations protect themselves and their customers from the threat of falsified forms.
2. Faster Viewing
Speed is often crucial when it comes to viewing or processing documents. The more information is contained in a PDF, the longer it takes an application to render and view it. While this is sometimes a byproduct of file size, complex or poorly-designed forms can also make a PDF less responsive. Flattening a multi-layered PDF into a single, flattened layer eliminates hidden elements and makes the document much easier to read. This can also apply to forms, which often contain substantial annotation information. Eliminating forms simplifies the document, allowing it to render more quickly.
3. Easier Printing
Many PDFs contain hidden data that is not visible on a viewing screen, but turns up on the page when the document is printed. Buttons and dropdown fields, for instance, can make a printed document look cluttered and confusing. When form fields are flattened, hidden annotation data is removed, eliminating any unpleasant surprises when the document hits the printer tray. For PDFs with multiple layers and hidden elements, flattening ensures that only the visible portions of the document will appear on the printed version.
How to Flatten a PDF Form Field Using ImageGear
With ImageGear, converting interactive form fields into static page content is a simple process that can be accomplished programmatically before documents are read by an OCR or ICR engine. It can also remove XFA form data, which often creates challenges for forms processing software.
ImageGear provides two options for flattening form fields. Although nearly identical in name, they perform somewhat different functions and should be used in different instances.
- FlattenFormField: Flattens specified fields into the page.
- FlattenFormFields: Flattens every field contained in the PDF into the page.
During the flattening process, a boolean can be used to indicate which fields should appear during printing, which is useful for hiding interactive elements that have no use on a printed page (such as buttons). Each field contains annotation information that determines how it should be represented on the page. Fields typically features one of three flags to dictate their representation:
- HIDDEN: Any field with this category will not appear on the page after flattening.
- NOVIEW: This field will only be visible on the page if “forPrinter” is specified during the flattening process.
- PRINT: These fields will appear on the page whether or not “forPrinter” is specified. If a field does not have the PRINT flag, it will only appear when “forPrinter” is not specified.
Dealing with XFA Forms
Although officially deprecated by international open PDF standards, Adobe’s proprietary XFA forms are still found in many PDF documents. Opening and editing a PDF that contains XFA data often creates exceptions that make them difficult to manage when it comes to extracting forms information. ImageGear FlattenFormFields function will remove any XFA data from a document during the flattening process.
How to Flatten a PDF for OCR Processing with ImageGear
While flattening forms is an effective way of simplifying a document, it doesn’t change the file format itself. The document itself is still a PDF. So while ImageGear’s form flattening features are an effective solution for managing PDFs securely, another approach is often needed for OCR image processing.
Consider, for instance, an insurance solution that needs to be able to extract data from a wide variety of forms. Some of these documents are interactive PDFs with editable forms, some are static PDFs, and still others are scanned images of a document. Rather than devising multiple strategies for dealing with each document type, the solution can streamline the process by simply rasterizing every PDF it receives into an image file, which effectively flattens any form elements it contains.
Once the PDF is flattened into an image, it can easily be run through an OCR engine to match it to the correct form template and then send it to the appropriate database or extract specific form information. This process ensures that all documents coming through the solution can be handled the same way, which makes for a more streamlined and efficient workflow.
Expand Your Application’s PDF Capabilities with ImageGear
Flattening PDFs is just one of many features developers can incorporate into their applications with Accusoft’s ImageGear SDK. Other core functionality includes the ability to annotate, compress, split, and merge PDF files, as well as convert multiple file types to or from PDF format. ImageGear also provides a broad range of PDF security features like access controls, encryption settings, and digital signatures. Get a hands-on trial of ImageGear today for a closer look at what this powerful SDK can do for your application.
Image compression has become such a ubiquitous aspect of the digital world that the average person doesn’t give it much thought. Even when they encounter textbook compression problems, such as running out of space for photos on their phones, waiting on a slow-loading webpage, or working with an overly pixelated image, they may not consider how effective compression techniques could resolve these issues.
Today’s software developers, by contrast, spend a lot of time thinking about how to incorporate better compression solutions into their applications. That’s why they frequently turn to image compression SDKs to help their end users better manage large and highly-detailed image files.
The Enduring Need for Image Compression
Although advancements in hard drive technology and easily scalable cloud storage have reduced many traditional data management concerns, large image files can still pose significant challenges. Many organizations that can’t utilize cloud storage options for compliance reasons or find the cost of those platforms prohibitively high.
While they may be able to add more on-premises storage easily enough, this option can also quickly become quite costly. Companies often need to procure much more storage than they may need on a day-to-day basis in order to meet redundancy requirements. Scaling physical storage also locks firms into burdensome equipment refresh cycles.
But simply storing images is only part of the challenge of data management. Large files are more difficult to move, even if an organization has a customized solution in place. If images can’t be shared quickly and easily through a secure platform, users may turn to riskier third-party applications.
Image compression alleviates these problems by reducing the overall size of image files. By compressing image files, organizations can maximize their storage potential and share files more easily. Image compression can also improve website and application performance by reducing the time it takes to load images.
Although there are many different methods of compressing images, they all involve algorithms that use a variety of shortcuts to reduce the overall size of pixel data. In some instances, compression involves the elimination of image data, which can degrade the image quality and make it impossible to return to its original size (lossy or irreversible compression). Other techniques retain the original image data, but can’t achieve the same level of compression (lossless or reversible compression).
Image Compression SDKs and Your Applications
While there are many compression options available in commercial imaging software, organizations often need the ability to compress image files within their core business applications without any external dependencies. Opening an image file with another program not only takes additional time and disrupts efficient workflow, but it also creates the potential for security risks and version confusion.
Consider, for instance, a medical provider that needs to send a high-resolution MRI scan to another provider. If the file is too large to deliver electronically, someone may try to get around the problem by using another program to compress the scan and then send it as an attachment over email or share it through a cloud platform. Suddenly, the confidential image file has been accessed by potentially vulnerable third-party applications, which creates a serious compliance issue. To make matters worse, the compressed image may not be associated with the patient’s file in the EHR system. And that’s not even getting in the question of whether or not the compression technique used damaged the image integrity!
An image compression SDK like ImageGear allows developers to integrate the ability to compress and convert image files into their applications without compromising security, efficiency, or quality. Optimized, standards-based compression libraries with support of formats like TIFF, PDF, PDF/A, JPEG 2000, JPEG, and DICOM deliver fast compression/decompression capabilities while ensuring that images remain high quality.
The primary advantage of integrating image compression capabilities directly into an application is the lack of third-party dependencies. This is crucial for software that is gathering and managing image files because it doesn’t cause any workflow disruptions. With an image compression SDK integration, image files can be shrunk down to more manageable sizes programmatically, which aids significantly in automated processes. Since the images are being compressed entirely within the application, it’s also easier to maintain strict version and access control throughout the life cycle of the file.
Image Compression SDKs vs Open Source Solutions
Many developers turn to open source compression libraries when looking to integrate image compression features into their applications. While this often seems like an easy, low cost solution, open source codecs can lead to unforeseen problems over time. Since many of them are not actively maintained, troublesome bugs can go unresolved and security gaps can create serious privacy risks.
One infamous example of this problem involved the widely used “Cornell Codec,” one of the first open source libraries that supported lossless JPEG compression. Developed in 1994, it was quickly adopted by many healthcare applications that needed to compress high-resolution medical images like MIRIs, CT scans, and X-Rays.
Unfortunately, the codec had a problem. When it compressed images into DICOM files (the industry standard used in medical imaging applications), it produced an error that made them unreadable when they were decompressed. Since the Cornell Codec was an open source solution embedded into numerous applications, the problem went unresolved for many years until Accusoft developed a code based workaround for our customers.
By choosing a well-supported image compression SDK like ImageGear for their application’s compression needs, developers can rest easier knowing that they’re deploying a tried and true solution that won’t create unexpected problems for their customers. Another benefit of a comprehensive image compression SDK is that it will provide a variety of compression libraries that can accommodate almost any file type and use case. ImageGear, for example, supports more than a dozen unique image compression types, including JPEG (lossy/lossless/progressive), RAW, ASCII, and Deflate.
ImageGear: More Than an Image Compression SDK
Image compression is just one of ImageGear’s many powerful document and image processing features. A versatile code-based solution, ImageGear allows developers to quickly integrate image conversion and cleanup features to their application along with editing, annotation, viewing, scanning, and printing capabilities. With support for a huge number of today’s leading document and image file formats as well as medical imaging support with ImageGear Medical, this SDK toolkit delivers the functionality developers need to get their applications to market faster. See what ImageGear can do for your application today by downloading a free trial.
As part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the LegalTech industry in its effort to transform the processes used by law firms and legal departments, Accusoft recently sponsored an educational webinar in conjunction with Law.com entitled “Build or Buy? Learning Which Is Best for Your Firm or Department.” Hosted by Zach Warren, editor-in-chief of Legaltech News, the webinar featured Neeraj Rajpal, CIO of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, and Kelly Wehbi, Head of Product at Gravity Stack, a subsidiary of the Reed Smith law firm.
Together, the panelists brought two unique perspectives to the ongoing “build vs buy” debate, both from the software vendors who provide LegalTech solutions and the decision makers working at the legal firms who make difficult decisions regarding technology solutions.
Build vs Buy: The Choices Before the Decision
Both Rajpal and Wehbi agree that any decision involving building or buying technology solutions has to begin with defining the problem a firm needs to solve. Regardless of whether you’re working with an independent legal firm or a legal department within a larger organization, it’s critical to understand the business problem, existing pain points, and potential value of a solution.
“When you start asking the right questions,” Raijpal notes, “you sometimes come across a situation where the requirements are not very clearly defined and that is a big red flag to me because when requirements are not defined, you’re not solving anything.”
Wehbi shares that concern about the requirements gathering process, pointing out that things tend to go wrong when firms fail to consider both the scope and magnitude of the challenge they’re trying to overcome. “Organizations can struggle a lot when they jump a little too quickly to a solution or to thinking about just what the return would be on a potential new product or service offered.”
It’s also critical to make sure that the firm is willing to accept some degree of change. If existing business processes are unclear or if no one is willing to consider changing how they work, then no amount of technology is going to make a difference. Understanding the culture of the firm and securing the buy-in from leadership is absolutely critical to making any technology integration succeed whether you’re buying a solution or building one from scratch.
The Pros and Cons of Building LegalTech Solutions
For an organization that has the resources, methodologies, and skill sets necessary to develop a solution that’s specifically designed to meet its unique requirements, building can be a great decision. The key advantage here is that it focuses specifically on the firm’s processes and user pain points, allowing developers to design a solution that is much more targeted than an “off-the-shelf” product.
Benefits of Building
- Applications can be customized to your exact specifications, allowing them to better address your specific business needs.
- Since you manage the solution from end to end, you retain much more control in terms of application features and functionality, how data is managed, and access security.
- Developing a specialized solution creates room for innovative technology that can provide a competitive edge.
- A custom-built solution presents fewer integration challenges, especially when it comes to interfacing with legacy systems used by many legal organizations.
Risks of Building
- Building a new solution from the ground up requires a great deal of time and resources that might be better spent elsewhere.
- Investing in custom software creates substantial technical debt that must be maintained over time and could create integration problems in the future when additional upgrades are required.
- If the new solution doesn’t contribute enough to the bottom line to justify the cost of operations, it could lead to negative economies of scale that make it difficult for the firm to grow its business.
The Pros and Cons of Buying LegalTech Solutions
Not every organization has the development resources to build a customized solution from the ground up. If they’re not ready to make that capital investment, a cloud-based offering may be better suited to their needs. Leveraging a proven, ready-to-launch SaaS solution offers a number of advantages, but could impact how the company makes technology decisions in the future.
Benefits of Buying
- Since SaaS services are usually cheaper and easier to implement, they are often the best option for companies with limited IT resources.
- Cloud solutions are good for solving common technology problems that smaller firms face.
- Already-live functionality means SaaS solutions can be implemented on a faster time frame.
- The cloud vendor handles all building and maintenance costs associated with the platform.
- Since the vendor sets up workflows and integrations as well as troubleshooting, your internal team is freed up to focus on other tasks.
Risks of Buying
- Off-the-shelf solutions offer less customization and control over infrastructure and data.
- Even industry-specific SaaS solutions are built for a general market in mind, so their features may not solve your firm’s unique requirements.
- Since the vendor manages security, customers have less oversight over how their sensitive data is managed.
- Working with a SaaS provider exposes firms to market risk. If the vendor goes out of business or sunsets a product, it may be difficult to repatriate data or transition to another provider.
When to Build
For firms with the development resources that are already using in-house document management solutions to streamline processes, SDK and API integrations are often the best way to enhance functionality. Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Suite leverages REST APIs and advanced HTML controls to provide powerful document viewing, conversion, editing, and assembly capabilities to web-based applications. Our SDK integrations also allow developers to build the functionality they need directly into their software at the code level.
Document Assembly
Law firms need automation solutions that allow them to easily create and manage multi-part, multi-stage contracts. Thanks to Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Editor, legal teams can rapidly identify and assemble sections of pre-existing text into new content that is both editable and searchable. PrizmDoc Editor integrates securely into existing applications and delivers in-browser support to help lawyers assemble assets without resorting to risky external dependencies.
Case Management
LegalTech applications can manage and review cases much more efficiently by integrating data capture, file conversion, and optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities. The ImageGear SDK helps legal teams access case data in a variety of formats without the need for downloading additional files or relying on third-party viewing applications. It can also convert multiple file types into secure and searchable PDF/A documents, making it easy to tag files with client numbers, names, and other identifiable information. Thanks to PDF/A functionality, ImageGear ensures that firms can stay on the right side of federal regulations.
eDiscovery
The rapid transition to predominantly digital documents has fundamentally altered the way legal organizations approach the discovery process. Innovative eDiscovery processes can streamline case management while also protecting client interests. In order to implement these strategies effectively, firms need applications that provide extensive file format support and search functionality as well as redaction and digital rights management (DRM) tools capable of protecting client privacy. PrizmDoc Viewer delivers these features along with scalable annotation capabilities that make it easier for collaborators to proofread, review, and make comments to case files without creating version confusion. As an end-to-end eDiscovery toolkit, our HTML5 viewer also includes whitelabeling support so it can be fully integrated into your application’s branding.
When to Buy
For smaller legal teams looking for broad functionality without development hassles or a new firm taking its first steps toward document automation, it often makes more sense to implement a bundled, buy-in solution like Accusoft’s Docubee SaaS platform.
Document Completion
Docubee makes document management easy with drag and drop data routing. Users can quickly create legal contracts, route the appropriate data to documents, deliver contracts for approval, and facilitate signing with secure eSignature technology.
Customized Templates
With Docubee, legal teams can create customized document templates and manage them on a section-by-section basis. Individual clauses can be added or removed as needed, allowing attorneys to repurpose document templates instead of creating them from scratch for every client.
End-to-End Support
Two-way communication support helps firms to build better dockets and negotiate more effectively. Documents can be updated automatically and version controls ensure that everyone is always looking at the most up-to-date version of a contract. Docubee also allows users to prioritize key tasks with collaborative redlining and notification tools.
Long-Term Storage and Security
Docubee stores data for up to six years to meet eDiscovery requirements. To better protect client privacy and meet changing compliance requirements, firms can also set destruction dates for contracts, templates, and case files. Docubee is SOC2 compliant, featuring multi-layer encryption to keep data under tight lock and key.
Hear the Full Conversation
To hear the full webinar and learn more about how legal firms make the difficult choice between building or buying their next technology solution, sign up now to get access to an on-demand recording of the event. If you’re ready to learn more about how Accusoft technology is helping to power innovation in the legal industry by delivering the latest in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions, visit our legal industry solutions page or contact us today to speak to one of our product experts.
Document image cleanup is a vital step in building an efficient and accurate processing workflow. In a perfect world, every file an organization receives would be in pristine, high-resolution condition so it could be processed quickly and easily. Unfortunately, the reality is that documents come in all sizes, conditions, and formats. Companies can receive vital information in the form of email, traditional mail, fax, or even text. Documents scanned into a crooked, low-resolution file are just as likely to be received alongside digital versions submitted entirely through a web application.
This poses a significant challenge for software developers building the next generation of automation solutions. Without some way of cleaning up document images, companies that still rely upon manual processes will struggle to read and process files. More importantly, poor image quality interferes with optical character recognition (OCR) engine accuracy, making more human interaction necessary to verify recognition results. By integrating document image cleanup tools into their applications, developers can enhance the speed and accuracy of their automated processes and help their customers leverage the full potential of digital transformation.
7 Essential Document Image Cleanup Features Your Application Needs
There are a few essential document image cleanup tools that should be considered absolutely essential for any application that has to manage multiple file formats. To see these tools in action and understand why they’re so vital, let’s take a look at how these features work in ImageGear, Accusoft’s powerful document and image processing SDK integration.
1. Despeckling
Speckles can appear on document images for a variety of reasons. In some cases, they are unwanted image noise created during the original scanning process (the classic “salt and pepper” noise), but in other instances, they’re simply the result of dust particles on the surface of a scanned document or on the scanner itself. They are frequently encountered when converting old documents into digital form. Speckling not only interferes with OCR engine performance, but can also make it difficult to maintain image fidelity when compressing or converting files.
ImageGear can reduce or eliminate speckling as part of the document image cleanup process. There are two ways to approach speckle removal:
- Despeckle Method: This function removes color noise from 1-bit images by taking the average color value in a square area around the speckle and replacing its pixels with that value.
- GeomDespeckle Method: This function uses the Crimmins algorithm to send the image through a geometric filter, reducing the undesired noise while preserving edges of the original image. This process is applied only to 8-bit grayscale images.
2. Image Inversion
With so many documents being scanned, converted, and transferred between applications, there’s a greater likelihood of something going wrong along the way. One of the most frequent problems is image inversion, which swaps pixel colors and turns a standard white background with black text into a black background with white text. This mix-up can render documents completely unreadable by OCR engines.
ImageGear can be configured to automatically recognize when image inversion is necessary. The invert method can also be used to immediately change the color of each pixel contained in the entire image, turning white to black and black to white.
3. Deskewing
Skewed document images are both cumbersome to manage and challenging for OCR engines to read accurately. Unfortunately, manually scanned documents are often uneven, and the problem is only becoming worse now that many people are using their phone cameras as makeshift document scanners. That’s why the first step in the document image cleanup process is often deskewing, which rotates and aligns the images to enhance recognition accuracy.
The deskewing process often involves more than just rotating a document, especially where images taken by a digital camera are concerned. ImageGear’s 3D deskew feature corrects for perception distortion, which can occur whenever a document is scanned by a handheld camera, using a sophisticated algorithm.
4. Blank Page Detection
Many documents converted into digital format contain information on both sides. If they are fed into a scanner along with single page documents, the resulting file will contain multiple blank pages. This might not seem like much of a problem, but if there is enough speckling or noise around the edge of the image, an application may try to apply an OCR engine to it and generate an error result. Blank page detection can quickly identify any image that is blank or mostly white and flag it for deletion.
5. Line Removal
Although they may not seem very troublesome at first glance, lines can create a number of problems for OCR engines. When lines and printed text overlap, it can be difficult for the engine to distinguish between the two. In some instances, the engine may even misread a line as a letter or number. Removing lines from a document prior to OCR reading ensures that the remaining text will be recognized more quickly and analyzed more accurately.
ImageGear supports both solid line removal and dotted line removal. The first method automatically detects and removes any horizontal and vertical lines contained in the document (like frames or tables), while the second method determines which dotted lines to remove by measuring the number and diameter of dots.
6. Border Removal
When scanned documents don’t align properly with the boundaries of the scanner or were copied onto paper that was larger than the original image at some point, the remaining space is often filled in with black. These borders are not only unsightly, but they also interfere with other document image cleanup processes. Although they can usually be cropped out easily, the cropping process alters the proportions of the image, which could create more problems later.
Removing these large black regions is easy with ImageGear’s CleanBorders option. It focuses on the areas near the edge of the page, which typically should not contain any important image data.
7. Remove Hole Punches
Important documents were often stored in binders before they were prepared for digitization. When scanned, the blank space from the hole punch leaves a large, black dot along the edge of the document. Unfortunately, these holes sometimes overlap with text or could be picked up as filled-in bubbles by an optical mark recognition (OMR) engine.
ImageGear can identify and remove punch holes created by common hole punchers, including two, three, and five hole configurations. The RemovePunchHoles method can be adjusted to account for differing hold diameters in addition to different locations.
Unlock Your Application’s Document Image Cleanup Potential with ImageGear
Although ImageGear can perform a variety of document handling functions such as viewing, conversion, annotation, compression, and OCR processing, its document image cleanup capabilities help applications overcome key content management challenges and enhance performance in other areas. Improved document image quality allows data to be extracted more quickly, enhances the viewing experience, and reduces complications when it comes to file compression and conversion.
Learn more about the ImageGear collection of SDKs to discover how they can deliver versatile document and image processing to your applications.
Today’s organizations are inundated with a variety of document and image formats on a regular basis. By integrating comprehensive PDF functionality into their applications, developers can provide the tools to manage those files much more easily. Converting files into PDFs makes them easier to share, modify, and annotate without having to worry about compatibility issues across applications.
Simply converting documents or images into searchable PDF files is easy enough, but in many cases, several files need to be merged into a single document or one large file must be split into multiple documents. Accusoft’s ImageGear SDK gives applications the ability to process PDFs programmatically, allowing users to quickly prepare documents for viewing and collaboration.
How to Merge PDF Files with ImageGear Using C#
ImageGear can merge two multi-page PDF documents into a single document. This is especially useful for organizations that have multiple files associated with the same workflow or account, such as loan applications or medical records. The following steps will walk you through the merge PDF process using ImageGear.NET in C#.
Step 1: Initialize PDF Support
Before getting started, you’ll need to initialize PDF support within ImageGear.NET (if you haven’t done so already during deployment). This initialization will allow your application to load, save, and process PDF files.
After creating a new “Console Application” and adding the required assembly reference and resources, you can use the following code snippet to load and save PDF files.
using System.IO;
using ImageGear.Formats;
using ImageGear.Formats.PDF;
using ImageGear.Evaluation;
namespace MyPDFProject
{
class Program
{
public void Initialize()
{
// Initialize evaluation license.
ImGearEvaluationManager.Initialize();
ImGearEvaluationManager.Mode = ImGearEvaluationMode.Watermark;
// Initialize common formats.
ImGearCommonFormats.Initialize();
// Add support for PDF files.
ImGearFileFormats.Filters.Insert(0, ImGearPDF.CreatePDFFormat());
ImGearPDF.Initialize();
}
public void Terminate()
{
// Dispose of support for PDF files.
ImGearPDF.Terminate();
}
public void LoadAndSave(string fileIn, string fileOut)
{
ImGearPDFDocument igPDFDocument = null;
try
{
// Load the PDF document.
using (FileStream inStream = new FileStream(fileIn, FileMode.Open))
igPDFDocument = (ImGearPDFDocument)ImGearFileFormats.LoadDocument(inStream, 0, (int)ImGearPDFPageRange.ALL_PAGES);
// Save the PDF document to a new file.
ImGearPDFSaveOptions pdfOptions = new ImGearPDFSaveOptions();
using (FileStream outStream = new FileStream(fileOut, FileMode.Create))
ImGearFileFormats.SaveDocument(igPDFDocument, outStream, 0, ImGearSavingModes.OVERWRITE, ImGearSavingFormats.PDF, pdfOptions);
}
finally
{
igPDFDocument?.Dispose();
}
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Program myProgram = new Program();
myProgram.Initialize();
myProgram.LoadAndSave(@"C:\PATHTOPDF\FILENAME.pdf", @"C:\PATHTOPDF\NEWNAME.pdf");
myProgram.Terminate();
}
}
}
Step 2: Set the Merge PDF Parameters
You will need to determine what order the documents will be combined in and set the page numeration for the new document.
Step 3: Merge the PDF Documents
Once you’ve identified the files you want to merge and the order they should go in, you can use the “MergePdfDocuments” command to assemble the new PDF file. Here’s what the code snippet looks like in C#:
// Merges two PDF document into a third PDF document.
public void Merge(string fileInFirst, string fileInSecond, string fileOut)
{
// ImageGear uses zero-based page numbers.
const int FIRST_PAGE_INDEX = 0;
ImGearPDFDocument igPDFDocumentFirst = null;
ImGearPDFDocument igPDFDocumentSecond = null;
ImGearPDFDocument igPDFDocumentResult = null;
try
{
// Load the source PDF documents.
using (FileStream inStream = new FileStream(fileInFirst, FileMode.Open))
igPDFDocumentFirst = (ImGearPDFDocument)ImGearFileFormats.LoadDocument(inStream, 0, (int)ImGearPDFPageRange.ALL_PAGES);
using (FileStream inStream = new FileStream(fileInSecond, FileMode.Open))
igPDFDocumentSecond = (ImGearPDFDocument)ImGearFileFormats.LoadDocument(inStream, 0, (int)ImGearPDFPageRange.ALL_PAGES);
// Create the resulting PDF document.
igPDFDocumentResult = new ImGearPDFDocument();
// Copy all pages of first document into resulting PDF document.
for (int pageIndex = FIRST_PAGE_INDEX; pageIndex < igPDFDocumentFirst.Pages.Count; pageIndex++)
igPDFDocumentResult.Pages.Add(igPDFDocumentFirst.Pages[pageIndex].Clone());
// Copy all pages of second document into resulting PDF document.
for (int pageIndex = FIRST_PAGE_INDEX; pageIndex < igPDFDocumentSecond.Pages.Count; pageIndex++)
igPDFDocumentResult.Pages.Add(igPDFDocumentSecond.Pages[pageIndex].Clone());
// Save the resulting PDF document to a new file.
ImGearPDFSaveOptions pdfOptions = new ImGearPDFSaveOptions();
using (FileStream outStream = new FileStream(fileOut, FileMode.Create))
ImGearFileFormats.SaveDocument(igPDFDocumentResult, outStream, 0, ImGearSavingModes.OVERWRITE, ImGearSavingFormats.PDF, pdfOptions);
}
finally
{
igPDFDocumentFirst?.Dispose();
igPDFDocumentSecond?.Dispose();
igPDFDocumentResult?.Dispose();
}
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Program myProgram = new Program();
myProgram.Initialize();
myProgram.Merge(@"C:\PATHTOPDF\FIRSTFILENAME.pdf", @"C:\PATHTOPDF\SECONDFILENAME.pdf", @"C:\PATHTOPDF\NEWNAME.pdf");
myProgram.Terminate();
}
After merging your files into a new document, you can begin working with the resulting PDF using ImageGear’s other PDF features:
- Compressing PDF files
- Set PDF security features
- Manage PDF metadata
- Add watermarks to PDF
- Edit PDF content
- Extract text from PDF
How to Split PDF Files with ImageGear Using C#
While the merge PDF command is used to combine multiple documents into a new, single PDF file, the split PDF command saves pages from an existing document as a separate document. A three-page PDF file, for instance, can be broken into three, single-page PDF documents.
Once you’ve initialized PDF support for ImageGear.NET, you can split a PDF document by following a few simple steps:
Step 1: Read the PDF into a System.IO.Stream Object
This allows ImageGear to read the stream using ImGearFileFormats.LoadDocument(FILE NAME) command.
Step 2: Determine PDF Page Count
The ImGearPDFDocument.Pages property provides access to the document’s page array, which can then be used to assemble a new document.
Step 3: Create a New PDF Document
The ImGearPDFDocument object can be used to create an empty PDF document that will serve as the destination file for the split pages.
Step 4: Insert Pages into the New Document
The InsertPages command takes specific pages from the source document (the PDF you’re splitting), and inserts them into the destination document. After the pages are inserted, you can save the new PDF to disk or memory. Keep in mind that the original document will still contain all pages, so splitting it into two documents will require you to create two new documents.
Here is a what splitting a single PDF document into several single-page PDF documents looks like in C#:
public void Split(string fileIn, string directoryOut)
{
// ImageGear uses zero-based page numbers.
const int FIRST_PAGE = 0;
// Ensure output directory exists.
if (!System.IO.Directory.Exists(directoryOut))
Directory.CreateDirectory(directoryOut);
// Load the source PDF document.
using (FileStream inStream = new FileStream(fileIn, FileMode.Open))
{
using (ImGearPDFDocument igPDFDocument = ImGearFileFormats.LoadDocument(inStream, FIRST_PAGE, (int)ImGearPDFPageRange.ALL_PAGES) as ImGearPDFDocument)
{
// Write each page in source PDF document to a separate PDF file.
for (int pageIndex = FIRST_PAGE; pageIndex < igPDFDocument.Pages.Count; pageIndex++)
{
// Construct the output filepath.
string outputFileName = string.Format("{0}_{1}.pdf", Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fileIn), pageIndex + 1);
string outputPath = System.IO.Path.Combine(directoryOut, outputFileName);
// Create a new empty PDF document.
using (ImGearPDFDocument igPDFDocumentResult = new ImGearPDFDocument())
{
// Insert page into new PDF document.
igPDFDocumentResult.InsertPages((int)ImGearPDFPageNumber.BEFORE_FIRST_PAGE, igPDFDocument, pageIndex, 1, ImGearPDFInsertFlags.DEFAULT);
// Save new PDF document to file.
igPDFDocumentResult.Save(outputPath, ImGearSavingFormats.PDF, FIRST_PAGE, FIRST_PAGE, 1, ImGearSavingModes.OVERWRITE);
}
}
}
}
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Program myProgram = new Program();
myProgram.Initialize();
myProgram.Split(@"C:\PATHTOPDF\FILENAME.pdf", @"C:\PATHTOPDF\OUTPUTDIRECTORY");
myProgram.Terminate();
}
Enhance Your PDF Capabilities with ImageGear
Accusoft’s ImageGear SDK provides a broad range of document and image processing functions beyond the ability to split and merge PDFs. Whether you need powerful file conversion capabilities, multi-language OCR support, or image cleanup, correction, and transformation functions, ImageGear integrations can enhance your application’s performance and versatility.
Learn more about the ImageGear collection of SDKs and see how they can help you shorten your development cycle and get your innovative products to market faster.
Organized each year by ALM, LegalTech is one of the most important events for the legal industry. The conference brings together a broad variety of experienced legal professionals and innovative LegalTech providers to highlight the business, regulatory, technology, and talent trends in the market. In previous years, LegalTech was held in New York City and attended by more than 8000 people.
LegalTech 2021 Is Now Legalweek(year)
This year, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the organizers to take a different approach. The first decision involved shifting LegalTech from an in-person conference to a fully virtual event in order to protect the health of both attendees and organizers. While many industry events have made a similar transition, the LegalTech team went a step further by breaking the conference into a series of five interactive virtual events held over the course of 2021. This new virtual series was dubbed Legalweek(year) and aims to provide legal professionals with a powerful resource for working through an unprecedented era.
“This decision was made to address the needs of our legal community during these trying times of COVID-19 and to provide the type of innovative education, solutions, and connections that is so crucial to legal leaders,” said ALM’s Mark Fried. “The 2021 series will set the stage for a resurgence in the legal sector and a big ‘Welcome Back’ to attendees for our in-person Legalweek event (in 2022).”
The first virtual Legalweek(year) event is scheduled for February 2-4, 2021 and will feature bestselling author and political leader Stacey Abrams, legal AI expert Josua Walker, and former New Jersey governor and federal prosecutor Chris Christie as keynote speakers. Attendees will not only be able to participate remotely, but they will also have an additional six months worth of on-demand access to virtual content following each event.
Visit the Accusoft Legalweek(year) Virtual Booth
As a longtime sponsor of LegalTech, Accusoft is proud to participate in this groundbreaking series of virtual events. The conference has historically been a great opportunity for us to speak directly with the independent software vendors and legal IT professionals about the latest industry trends and LegalTech applications.
This year, we’ll be hosting a “virtual booth” through the Legalweek(year) event site. Whether you’re a developer looking to solve a particular software challenge or a project manager building an in-house solution for your firm, you’ll find plenty of resources and support at the Accusoft booth. Read through our numerous case studies and LegalTech whitepapers or schedule a meeting with one of our product specialists to learn more about our SDK and API integrations for legal software. You can even chat with someone in real time if you need a quick answer!
After completing registration, Legalweek(year) attendees can access the Accusoft virtual booth during the event simply by logging into their account.
Our LegalTech Solutions
Accusoft’s combination of content processing and conversion integrations help today’s innovative LegalTech applications reach their full potential. As law firms and legal departments incorporate more technology into their everyday operations, they need software tools capable of automating workflows, simplifying eDiscovery, and facilitating secure collaboration.
PrizmDoc Viewer
Our feature-rich HTML5 document viewer allows users to seamlessly view a variety of document and image files within their secure web application. Thanks to PrizmDoc Viewer’s powerful REST APIs, developers can provide additional functionality, such as annotations and redactions, that is essential for legal organizations.
PrizmDoc Editor
In addition to allowing users to edit DOCX files within the secure confines of their LegalTech applications, PrizmDoc Editor’s automated document assembly features streamlines the contract creation process to improve efficiency and accuracy. Documents can be assembled programmatically, incorporating commonly used or specific clauses, special language, and client data to eliminate “cut and paste” errors. Once documents are assembled, PrizmDoc Editor’s sharing tools allow firms to control access and ensure that everyone is working from the same up-to-date version.
ImageGear
With the ability to read, convert, and compress a wide range of files, our ImageGear SDK integration provides LegalTech applications with the tools they need to manage almost any type of file collected during the eDiscovery process. Powerful optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities allow ImageGear to read a wide variety of languages from around the world and convert scanned documents into searchable plain text or PDF files.
LegalTech in 2021 and Beyond
As legal organizations continue to make strides toward achieving true digital transformation, they will need versatile LegalTech applications capable of adapting along with them. Accusoft’s family of SDK and API integrations can help developers leverage the power of their innovative software tools and free up resources to focus on improving their core capabilities.
We hope you’ll join us at Legalweek(year) on February 2-4, 2021. Our booth will be available throughout the virtual event, so stop by to find out how Accusoft can help you realize the potential of your LegalTech applications.
Although often considered a bit old fashioned, the insurance industry has made great strides in recent years to adapt to the changing needs of its customers. The latest generation of insurance customers expects faster service, better support, and more options from providers. Given these pressures, it’s no surprise that InsurTech developers have found ample opportunities to deliver solutions that help insurance firms better manage their workflows and create better customer experiences.
Despite the successes of this digital transformation, however, there are still a number of challenges that InsurTech developers face when building new applications. Investing heavily in creating powerful AI and big data tools might help those platforms stand out from the crowd, but they won’t find much success with firms if they don’t also provide the core functionality organizations need to service their customers.
That’s why many InsurTech developers are turning to versatile SDK and API integrations to expand their feature sets without compromising their development timelines.
4 Major Challenges of InsurTech Applications
1. Security and Privacy
As the insurance industry continues to shift toward digital processes and platforms, it’s become more important than ever for InsurTech applications to keep sensitive data secure. While most organizations do invest in cybersecurity protections, they often don’t realize how their own practices could potentially pose a risk to customer information. This is especially true of insurers that rely on third-party programs for various tasks like document viewing and editing. Take, for instance, the case of Folksam Group, which inadvertently shared client data from as many as one million customers with Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Adobe in late 2020.
2. File Management
Today’s insurers are receiving all kinds of documents, files, and images from their customers, which creates something of a document dilemma. A single auto accident claim, for instance, might have valuable information spread across multiple PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheet files, scanned images of hand-written forms, and image files. In order to process claims quickly and effectively, firms need InsurTech solutions that provide an all-in-one solution that can handle a broad array of file formats. Without these file management tools, insurers will be forced to use multiple programs to meet their needs, which creates inefficient dependencies and increases security risks.
3. Data Collection
Insurance companies gather quite a bit of information from form applications, both in physical and digital formats. Unfortunately, transferring that information from a form document into an InsurTech system is often a laborious manual process. Not only is manual data collection time consuming, it also increases the likelihood of human error. Even when firms do implement an InsurTech solution with forms processing capabilities, however, they often lack the capability to read certain types of form fields, especially those completed by hand. The ability to adapt to new form templates is also critical for organizations that want to invest in automation.
4. Remote Collaboration
The COVID-19 pandemic may have forced insurance offices to rapidly embrace a remote work strategy, but many firms had already been investing in some form of hybrid work model for years. Nationwide was able to transition 98 percent of its workforce to remote status precisely because the company already had the technology solutions in place to allow insurance agents to work from home. Without some way of facilitating remote collaboration directly through InsurTech applications, organizations end up relying on email, which poses serious security concerns. Furthermore, with multiple copies of a document being distributed and downloaded, it quickly becomes difficult to know which version incorporates the most up-to-date changes.
SDK and API InsurTech Solutions
Building new functionality into an application always involves a tradeoff. When developers choose to code something from scratch, that means pulling team members away from another project or extending the product’s release timeline. In a fast-moving industry where InsurTech developers are racing competitors to be the first to market, it doesn’t make sense to design and build every aspect of an application in-house.
Rather than pulling valuable development resources away from their innovative InsurTech features, developers can solve common insurance challenges much faster with SDK toolkits and API integrations.
Secure File Viewing
The easiest way for InsurTech solutions to keep documents secure is to integrate HTML5 viewing capabilities directly into the application. Rather than being forced to download or open a file for viewing in a third-party application, employees can view multiple document formats natively. This is critical because it means no data will be shared with third-party programs. Since the files remain safely within the secure InsurTech environment, firms can also control the level of access to any document, which prevents unauthorized individuals from downloading or viewing the contents. Thanks to API-based integrations like Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer, InsurTech developers can help their applications safely view more than 100 unique file types without any third-party dependencies.
Data Capture
By integrating forms processing capabilities into their applications, InsurTech developers can provide their clients with powerful tools that allow them to gather essential data quickly and accurately. As the essential connective tissue between customers and insurance databases, form field recognition integrations use OCR technology to intelligently identify form data and extract it for processing. They can also be set up to identify a wide range of insurance forms to quickly identify and scan documents to streamline processing workflows. Accusoft’s FormSuite for Structured Forms even goes a step further by incorporating powerful image cleanup functionality to ensure that data will be extracted as accurately as possible.
File Conversion
In order to meet the file management challenges of today’s insurance providers, InsurTech developers need document and image processing integrations that can read and write multiple file formats. Information spread across multiple documents, emails, or even texts can be processed using OCR technology, and then consolidated and converted into a variety of formats for easy reference and collaboration. Rather than juggling several files with different dependencies, an SDK integration like Accusoft’s ImageGear can easily output processed files in PDF, RTF, XML, or DOCX format for viewing and editing within a single application.
Editing and Annotation
Providing secure document viewing capabilities solves only one half of the insurance collaboration challenge. InsurTech applications also need to provide both internal and external stakeholders with the ability to edit and markup documents throughout the application and claims process. Content processing integrations can allow authorized users to make changes to documents completely within their InsurTech solution and review markups and comments from other collaborators.
Since all editing occurs within the application itself, there’s no need to worry about anyone downloading a document to make changes locally and creating confusion over which version is the most up-to-date. Redactions may also be necessary to hide private or confidential information from unauthorized viewers. As an added benefit, PrizmDoc Viewer’s editing features allow users to make a variety of markups and redactions while preserving the integrity of the original file.
Accelerate Your InsurTech Application Development with Accusoft
Accusoft’s collection of powerful SDK toolkits and API integrations provide innovative InsurTech developers with the resources they need to solve core insurance industry challenges. By implementing proven functionality into their applications, project managers can streamline the development process and dedicate more resources to the innovative features that will set their platform apart from the competition.
Whether you’re looking to incorporate versatile document viewing and editing or need a more accurate forms processing solution, Accusoft’s family of InsurTech SDKs and APIs can help your development team get to market faster. Learn more about what our products can do for your application in our InsurTech fact sheet.
The healthcare industry has undergone a profound change in the 21st century. A combination of technological advancements and regulatory pressures has encouraged providers to adopt new software platforms and update their existing IT stack. Gone are the days of physical file archives and cramped server rooms; today’s healthcare organizations are instead embracing innovative Internet of Things (IoT) devices, cloud-based file systems, and colocated server deployments that enhance their service capabilities and efficiency.
Unfortunately, not every provider is implementing new technology at the same pace. As science fiction author William Gibson famously observed, “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” Today’s healthcare organizations must navigate a complex landscape of software solutions and overcome compatibility challenges in order to provide better service and care patients deserve.
The Drive for Interoperability
One of the key components of the 2010 Affordable Care Act was the push to promote interoperability among healthcare providers. The logic was fairly simple: for a healthcare marketplace to work effectively, patient information needs to be able to move freely between providers. That meant the myriad healthcare technology platforms being adopted by different organizations needed to be able to communicate with one another and share a common set of file formats.
The combined pressures of digital transformation and interoperability have led most hospitals and specialized health providers to implement picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). These digital archives and file management platforms allow providers to easily, store, retrieve, distribute, and present a variety of medical images, such as CT, MRI, and DR scans. They have largely replaced the expensive and complex manual filing systems used to store physical film and provided a far more secure means of protecting patient data.
Healthcare Image Processing
One of the advantages of shifting to digital scan formats is the ability to compress images while maintaining the ability to decompress them back to their original images. Poorly optimized compression tools can deteriorate the integrity of a high-resolution image, potentially obscuring key diagnostic indicators. In order to overcome these challenges, healthcare systems need image processing features capable of supporting rapid data compression, lossless transmission, and image cleanup.
Software developers working on PACS platforms and medical applications can turn to image processing SDKs like PICTools Medical to incorporate extensive compression and decompression capabilities into their solutions. These SDK tools can help overcome a variety of diagnostic imaging challenges, ensuring that complex medical files can be processed without any degradation of quality for easy viewing and management across multiple PACS platforms.
The Role of EHR Systems
Part of the push for interoperability included the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) systems, which digitized patient files to make them easier to share between healthcare providers. One of the challenges that came along with this adoption, however, was the handling of high-resolution medical images. While most healthcare providers have implemented some form of an EHR system, many of them do not have a PACS solution, especially if they don’t do any kind of medical scanning on-site. That means their ability to view certain types of medical images is quite limited.
In theory, the medical industry has already solved this challenge with the development of the DICOM standard. Short for “digital imaging and communications in medicine,” DICOM was originally developed in a joint venture between the American College of Radiology (ACR) and National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) to ensure that healthcare providers would be able to view medical images no matter which vendor’s modality originally created them.
Unfortunately, the size and complexity of DICOM files often make them difficult for providers to manage. For instance, most EHR systems can transmit DICOM files (through a DICOM out or DICOM send functionality), but they often cannot view or annotate them. That’s because Windows doesn’t recognize DICOM files as image files. More importantly, large DICOM files often exceed the digital transfer limits of common communication channels like email. That leads to DICOM images being transferred on physical mediums, like discs or flash drives, that include viewer software.
Unlocking the Potential of DICOM
Healthcare technology developers can help expand EHR functionality and realize the potential of DICOM by building viewing, conversion, and compression capabilities into their applications. Medical imaging SDKs like ImageGear Medical can not only convert DICOM files into a variety of easily viewable formats, but also perform essential cleanup functions to ensure that images maintain the highest integrity possible. High-level APIs can abstract or redact the details of a DICOM file to ensure the anonymity of the patent data as well as to compress it without degrading the image, making it easy to transfer files over secure channels rather than resorting to physical mediums or non-compliant public cloud platforms.
The ability to convert DICOM files into more easily managed formats also helps providers to share more information with patients. Diagnostic scans, for instance, can be quickly opened on IoT devices like a tablet and viewed entirely within the local application without having to use special equipment. Images can even be transferred directly to patients, allowing them to conveniently view them on their own devices. And thanks to lossless compression, medical offices can transmit the source DICOM files to other organizations when referring a patient to an outside provider.
Accusoft Medical Imaging Toolkits
With more than two decades of experience working with the imaging needs of the healthcare industry, Accusoft offers a variety of medical imaging toolkits to help software developers enhance their healthcare applications. Whether you’re developing a standalone imaging solution or adding viewing, compression, and cleanup features to your EHR system, our collection of SDKs and APIs can provide core medical image functionality so you can focus on building a better user experience and get to market faster. Learn more about how our medical imaging toolkits are improving outcomes in the healthcare industry and accelerating digital transformation trends.
Although it might feel as though time has been standing still for several months, 2020 is finally coming to an end. It’s been a year of unprecedented disruption for many industries, and insurance companies often found themselves struggling to adapt to change. Firms that had the foresight to invest in digital transformation backed by InsurTech solutions, however, proved more capable of meeting the moment and are now poised to thrive in 2021 and beyond.
As the new year approaches, it’s helpful to take a look back at some of the key trends that defined 2020 and created opportunities for innovative InsurTech applications. Understanding the pressures facing the insurance industry will also identify InsurTech projections to watch in the future.
5 Insurance Trends and InsurTech Projections
1. Remote Collaboration
No discussion of 2020 insurance industry trends would be complete without exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected organizations. According to a survey conducted by Deloitte, 48 percent of insurance executives agreed that the pandemic revealed how unprepared their business was for such a disruptive crisis. From the sudden transition to a remote workforce to a shift in risk adjustment factors across the market, insurers have had to scramble to adapt their operations and continue delivering quality services to clients.
With so many employees going remote and customers unable to meet with representatives in-person, organizations that made early investments in digital collaboration tools and automation software were better equipped to meet the challenges of 2020. The industry is expected to make tremendous investments in digital transformation in the upcoming year, whether it’s in powerful document editing and management software, file conversion tools, or secure communication channels that better facilitate true collaboration.
2. Customer Demographic Shifts
Prior to 2020, insurance customers tended to be older, with millennials purchasing life insurance policies at lower rates and often delaying home ownership until later in life. This trend seems to have reversed itself in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, with life insurance application activity growing twice as fast for people under 45 than those aged 45-49. Since many of these younger buyers are first-time applicants, it’s important for insurance agents and firms to make the process as streamlined and easy to navigate as possible.
According to a nationwide industry survey, just over 75 percent of independent insurance agents are age 50 or older and nearly 68 percent have more than 20 years of experience. Having such a long-tenured workforce poses challenges when it comes to implementing new processes and reaching out to potential customers with different needs and preferences than those of earlier decades. In order to remain competitive, however, firms must invest in the right InsurTech solutions to gather data that will give them a better picture of what insurance products and services younger customers will find attractive.
3. Robotic Process Automation
The shift to a remote workplace greatly disrupted traditional workflows. Without centralized offices, key insurance tasks like claims processing and document verification are much more difficult to perform manually. Organizations that had already invested in robotic process automation (RPA) to handle repetitive tasks were in a much better position to thrive in a remote landscape.
Insurance companies must be able to process a variety of forms during an application or a claim. Having automated InsurTech tools in place to quickly extract data from a variety of sources and carry information over from one form to another not only saves time, but also greatly reduces the risk of human error. For a remote workforce, automation software helps to consolidate complex workflows to eliminate version confusion and enhance collaboration.
4. Artificial Intelligence
Risk assessment and data analysis are crucial to the underwriting process. In a volatile economic environment, insurance firms are under more pressure than ever before to set the right premiums. Although the data is now readily available to make more accurate assessments, sorting through that information manually is difficult and time consuming.
As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, the scope of risk can change dramatically in a very short period of time. By deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze risk factors and review potential fraud claims quickly and accurately, insurers can create customized policies and provide more responsive service to their customers.
Implementing AI-driven algorithms as part of the underwriting and fraud analysis process will only be one part of the challenge facing firms in 2021. These powerful tools must have sufficient data in order to make informed predictions. By improving the data collection process with form processing tools, file conversion, and programmatic searches, insurers can provide their analytics platforms the best possible information for analysis.
5. Customer Experience
One of the few positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it forced organizations across every industry to find new ways of connecting with their customers. The insurance industry has traditionally lagged behind other sectors, tending to lean upon a combination of tradition and legacy infrastructure to engage with customers. But the events of 2020 have underscored the need for a true digital transformation that fundamentally reorients the way firms market, sell, and deliver insurance products. The need has become so evident, in fact, that a recent PWC survey found that 70 percent of insurance CEOs are prioritizing customer experience and user interfaces as their top investment opportunity.
In the coming year, firms will likely continue to invest in technology that makes it easier for customers to research and manage their policies. Whether it’s applications that allow them to submit claims information in a variety of file formats or forms and contracts that automatically fill in commonly used form fields, the core focus will be on making the customer experience as frictionless as possible with a variety of InsurTech benefits.
The Role of InsurTech
Many insurance companies will be looking to upgrade their technology stack and client-facing applications in response to these trends. That creates a tremendous opportunity for InsurTech developers who are creating the next generation of software tools to streamline core processes common to the insurance industry.
Delivering those digital products on a short timeline with limited resources, however, can be quite a challenge for even the most innovative InsurTech startup. That’s why many of them turn to third-party solutions to provide proven functionality that lies outside the scope of their development expertise.
Features like forms processing, document conversion, and image viewing can be easily integrated into an application using an SDK or API, saving the team weeks or even months of work. This helps InsurTech companies get their products to market faster to meet the digital transformation needs of their customers and keep them a step ahead of their competitors.
InsurTech SDKs and APIs
Accusoft’s family of processing and automation SDKs and APIs provide InsurTech developers with the tools they need to easily plug essential functionality into their applications so they can get back to focusing on their most innovative features. With a variety of deployment options and a diverse set of code-based solutions, we have the flexibility to meet your software’s unique use case and substantially reduce your time to market.
Whether you’re looking to integrate document viewing, collaboration, or processing to your InsurTech platform, our SDK and API-based products can help you deliver the InsurTech benefits your customers are looking for. Learn more about our insurance solutions or contact us today to demo one of our products.