Technical FAQs

The use of electronic health records (EHR) systems has been steadily rising in the healthcare industry. A government study released in December 2016, in fact, showed that 87 percent of office-based physicians had implemented some form of an EHR system. This is a dramatic shift from 2004, when only 21 percent had done so, with most providers still relying largely upon paper records.

EHR systems, which focus broadly on a patient’s entire medical history, are meant to be seen and managed by all care providers for a given patient. This approach is a departure from the earlier trend of using electronic medical records (EMR), which typically are more detail-oriented about the patient’s history and meant to be maintained by one specific practice. The expanding use of EHR methodology, not surprisingly, has also occurred during a general industry shift in priority from services-based care to quality-based care, since the patient’s entire treatment experience is now more easily compiled and analyzed.

Why security is critical for EHR systems

So if you’ve helped implement an EHR-based system for medical professionals, those numbers are probably very encouraging. But it’s important to remember that with this freer movement of information come risk and responsibility. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and subsequent legislation, for instance, set stringent federal standards for the safeguarding of patient information.

Thus, if there’s one word you need to keep in mind when planning EHR improvements it’s this: security. But what should you do to guarantee a secure, authoritative patient data system, and how should you go about it?

A complex problem with a powerful solution

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc document and image viewer API is a versatile toolkit for adding powerful features to EHR systems while meeting strict security requirements. It supports any programming language or platform along with displaying dozens of file types, and is continually being updated to meet the demands of a diverse customer base.

Here are three ways PrizmDoc is being used inside EHR and EMR systems to make management of patient documents easier and more efficient:

A complete digital records resource

The trend toward EHR is here to stay, and PrizmDoc is an indispensable tool for keeping up with the fast-changing medical industry. It creates a central repository for all patient forms, provides secure viewing of them and facilitates group work and discussion. It also features a highly intuitive user interface that patients and providers alike appreciate, and its search functionality is a huge help when high volumes of records are involved.

Let us help

We’re always here to answer your questions about PrizmDoc and other products from our complete suite of document and imaging tools. Contact us here to learn more about how Accusoft can enhance any medical document management system, including the comprehensive upgrading your EHR system.

Technology is simplifying communication between humans and computers. The old keyboard-and-mouse model has become antiquated for many uses, and even touch screens introduce inefficiencies to the process of entering and retrieving information. As multitasking has become the norm in both personal and professional life, a very pure simplicity – voice technology – is emerging as the new standard for managing devices in the home as well as the office.

The use of voice commands is a simple, natural way to control machines, freeing up the user’s hands much like speakerphones, headsets and the popular Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers. Word recognition technology still isn’t perfect and can lead to some unintended (and very funny) gaps in semantics, but most users are more than willing to accept the occasional misstep in exchange for the convenience of breaking away from the keyboard and screen while operating a device.

Who can voice technology help?

There are numerous examples of cases where this technology is useful, such as in presenting information. Years ago, a slide show presenter might use an assistant to manually advance through a display, typically, sequence of images or data. More recently, a Bluetooth controller with “Next” and “Previous” buttons could maneuver somewhat more smoothly through the slides. But voice commands take the interface to another level, freeing the presenter to interact more freely with the audience and possibly present more information in parallel.

Users reading instructions to perform a complex task can also benefit from the technology. Voice commands controlling a phone or tablet can help navigate through a PDF or Microsoft Word document detailing recipes, furniture assembly or even engine repair while leaving the operator’s hands – and eyes – free to handle the job.

Portability is another key element in the use of voice commands. The ability to verbally control an application makes it much more accessible and convenient on the go, whether at a hospital, school or other public place where typing can be awkward and time-consuming. Retrieving maps, directions and contact information are all important tasks for mobile users that are simplified by voice functionality.

An entire generation, of course, is already accustomed to this technology, using it to handle everyday tasks without a second thought: “Siri, where’s the nearest coffee shop?” “Alexa, play that song that goes ‘Make a change, and break away.’” More and more devices facilitate the exchange of information by handling voice commands just like these, indulging the growing demand for automation.

Making the PrizmDoc viewer understand voice

We identified a number of use cases where voice support can be a huge help for anyone viewing information. The versatile PrizmDoc is a powerful tool for accessing a multitude of documents and images, and here we will detail the technical process of making it understand voice commands.

PrizmDoc allows multiple types of customization, and adding basic voice control is not too different from adding a custom button. For our purposes we are using Web Speech API to process voice data.

We will add a button which starts voice recognition in the viewer. When the button is pressed, the viewer will listen and process a few voice commands, such as scrolling, page navigation and adding annotations.

If the viewer cannot understand a command, it will indicate this with a red question mark in the voice recognition button.

Adding the button HTML

The bulk of the viewer markup is inside the file viewerTemplate.html; this includes all the toolbars and vertical slide-outs.

OS and browser requirements

This example was tested in the Chrome browser running Windows. See the “Browser Compatibility” section on Mozilla’s developer site for more details on browser support.

A more complete viewer solution

PrizmDoc, compatible with all programming languages and platforms and able to display all major file formats, has established itself as the premier development toolkit for document and image viewing. Adding voice support to its user interface makes it easier to operate just as it saves time and trouble for developers and end users alike.

To learn more about PrizmDoc and its various uses in virtually unlimited industries, click here. To view demos of PrimzDoc’s features, click here. To contact Accusoft with any questions or comments about this blog or its products for document and imaging solutions, click here.

Goal

Create a Visual Basic (VB.NET) program that can generate a barcode in VB.NET from an existing table of data to represent shipping orders, then read single or multiple barcodes from image files to represent receiving orders.

Requirements

• Microsoft Windows 7 or greater
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 or greater
• Accusoft Barcode Xpress .NET

Programming Skill

Visual Basic Intermediate Level

Need to create a barcode generator and reader in VB.NET? Accusoft Barcode Xpress is a barcode generator and reader library that supports over 30 different types of barcodes, and can accurately read barcodes even when they are damaged or scanned at low resolution. In this tutorial we’ll create a simple order shipping and receiving example to demonstrate creating and reading barcodes in VB.NET.

VB.NET Barcode Generator/ Reader Sample Code

You can download the Visual Basic sample code here. Note that you’ll also need to install a free evaluation copy of Barcode Xpress .NET on your machine. 

[Download Code Sample]

Getting Your Project Set Up

For this example we’ll use Microsoft Visual Studio to generate our project files. After installing the Barcode Xpress .Net SDK, start a Visual Basic project. In order for this program to be properly generated, make sure that the Framework System.Drawing, and the Extension Accusoft Barcode Xpress 12 .Net are added to the project. The easiest way is to right-click on References in the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio, then click on Framework to select System.Drawing.

Then Click on Extensions and select Accusoft Barcode Xpress 12 .Net.

In the code for your Visual Basic project, place the following commands to import the libraries into your code:

And with that, let’s get coding!

Getting Started with Data

For this example, we will assume an environment where orders are being tracked in a database.  To represent this, we can use a simple table to represent orders that need to be tracked for shipping and verified that they were received. For our example, the following data is generated:

For this example, we’re going to work under the assumption that Order Numbers are unique values.

Generating Barcodes In VB.NETData

To track shipments, we can generate barcodes that that would be attached to the shipping label.  With Barcode Xpress, that’s a simple task. First, we’ll have our program look through the shipping table and any orders that haven’t been shipped (shipped is False), take the shippingOrder field and give it to our GenerateBarCodes function:

The GenerateBarCodes function leverages Barcode Xpress.  Barcode Xpress supports a plethora of barcode types – you can check them all out at https://help.accusoft.com/BarcodeXpress/v12.0/dotnet/webframe.html#Supported_Barcode_Types.html . For this example, we’ll use the Code 39 standard to generate our barcodes.

Here’s how we actually create our BarcodeExpress object and update the options:

What we’ve done here is create our BarcodeXpress object, set it to the Code39Barcode standard, and then set the barcode value to the current shippingOrder value.  All that’s left is to generate the barcode image itself and save it to a file. After that, the files can be used however we want – print them out as labels, embed them in documents – whatever works best.  We can leverage the Visual Basic object System.Drawing.Bitmap to do that for us.

That’s it!  A few lines of code, and when we call the GenerateBarCode function with a shippingOrder that equals A123456, here’s the result:

In the case of our sample program, it takes a few milliseconds to generate the barcode files and be ready for shipping.  Our function returns a boolean value if it’s successful, and our code then sets “shipped” to true and sets the date and time in our table of data.

Reading/Scanning Barcodes In VB.NET

So we’ve generated our barcodes to send out our shipments. But what about receiving them?  Using the same Barcode Xpress object, we can have the system scan in the barcodes, get the data from the barcode, look the order up in our table, then update the table to show the order was received and what time it occurred. Depending on how we receive the images will depend on your setup – but for this example we’ll just manually set a couple of files to test it out.

Here’s a simple example using one of the barcode files we generated:

Our program has a command line switch.  If you run it without any command line options, like this:

Then you’ll just have the barcode files generated off of our table.  Run it like this, though:

Where “imagefile” is a bitmap image with our barcode inside (such as, for example, the “C266760.png).  We’ll pick this up from our Main program like so:

Now we can scan our file with this command:

What we can do is generate an array of Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSdk.Result objects, then extract the values from there.  The function ReadBarCodes can be called via this method:

The function starts by taking the filename submitted to it, loading it into a Bitmap object, then using the same BarcodeXpress object. Only this time, instead of creating a barcode image, it can read from the bitmap image, and store the results into the Result object:

Scanning the barcode above will return an array with just one value in it – the barcode data for shipment C266760 from our example, and we can update our table of values to show this order was received and the date/time we scanned it:

But what if we have more than one barcode in our image, like this one:

Not only do we have multiple barcodes – but looks like someone slapped on one of them at an angle.  This is included in the sample as “received_002.jpg”.

Angled barcodes?  Not a problem. In fact, we can test this by displaying the table before and after scanning the file:

Success!

Even the one that was at a different angle was detected accurately.  Barcode Xpress can handle scanning barcodes in a variety of standards and formats, from multiple angles and even when the image has been degraded.

Ready to get started?

Check out the Accusoft Barcode Xpress free trial at https://www.accusoft.com/products/barcode-xpress-collection/barcode-xpress/ and give it a try.  Not into Visual Basic or .Net?  That’s fine – there are versions for Java, Linux and even your favorite mobile devices.

Implementing specialized viewing technology saves time and resources during the development process so FinTechs can get their products to market faster. By selecting the right integration partner from the beginning, they can put themselves in a position to scale capabilities in the future without suffering unexpected costs or compromising performance. 

Viewing Integrations and the Problem of Scale

FinTech developers often turn to API-based viewing integrations like Accusoft’s PrizmDoc because they provide the tremendous power and flexibility that modern financial services applications require. Whether it’s file conversion, robust annotation, document assembly, or redaction, FinTech software must be able to provide extensive document processing features to meet customer expectations.  

In order to implement those advanced viewing capabilities, the developer usually needs to set up a dedicated server as part of their on-premises infrastructure or in a cloud deployment. One of the biggest advantages of API-based integrations is that customers only have to pay for the processing resources they use, but this can also pose some challenges when it comes to scaling application capacity. 

As FinTech companies expand their services, they need to be able to deliver document viewing capabilities to a larger number of users. If each viewing session requires the server to prepare and render documents for viewing, costs can quickly escalate. As server workloads increase, viewing responsiveness may be affected, resulting in delays and slower performance. 

While some users may still need to use server-based viewing to access more powerful imaging and conversion features, many customers simply need a quick and easy way to view and make minor document alterations. FinTech developers need a versatile solution that can meet both requirements if they want to scale their services smoothly. 

Introducing PrizmDoc Hybrid Viewing

PrizmDoc’s new Hybrid Viewing feature provides FinTech applications the best of both worlds by offloading the document processing workloads required for viewing to client-side devices. Rather than using server resources to convert files into SVG format and render them for display, Hybrid Viewing instead converts files into PDF format and then delivers that document to the end user’s browser for viewing.  

Shifting the bulk of document processing work to client-side devices significantly reduces server workloads, which translates into lower costs for FinTech applications. 

For documents not already in PDF format, the PrizmDoc Hybrid Viewing feature offers new PDF viewing packages that pre-convert documents into PDF for fast, responsive local viewing. 

By reducing the server requirements for rendering files, FinTech providers can easily scale their applications without worrying about additional users increasing their document processing costs. PrizmDoc Hybrid Viewing also eliminates the need for separate viewing solutions implemented to work around server-based viewing, which allows developers to streamline their tech stack and further optimize customer experiences. 

5 Ways Hybrid Viewing Enhances FinTech Applications

PrizmDoc’s Hybrid Viewing feature provides FinTech developers with several important benefits that improve application flexibility and deliver greater value to their customers.  

1. Resource Savings 

Hybrid Viewing minimizes server loads by offloading the bulk of the processing required to view a document to client-side devices. Reducing server requirements translates into lower costs and frees up valuable processing resources for other critical FinTech workloads. 

2. Scalable Viewing 

Shifting the processing work required for viewing to local devices allows FinTech applications to scale their user base with minimal cost. 

3. Enhanced Performance 

Offloading document preparation to the end user’s device improves viewing speed and responsiveness, especially for large documents. 

4. Increased Productivity 

Diverting workloads to client-side devices allows application users to process, view, and manage multiple documents faster. FinTech developers can leverage Hybrid Viewing to provide a better user experience that helps their customers to be more efficient and productive. 

5. Improved Storage Management 

For documents not already in PDF format, Hybrid Viewing can utilize PDF-based viewing packages that are significantly smaller than conventional SVG viewing files. Files can be pre-converted for fast, easy viewing without taking up extra storage space. 

Enhance FinTech Applications with PrizmDoc Hybrid Viewing 

PrizmDoc’s new Hybrid Viewing feature allows FinTech developers to seamlessly scale their application’s viewing capabilities without having to deploy new servers or rethink their cost structure. Shifting document processing to local devices provides end-users with faster, more responsive performance, especially when viewing lengthy documents. By keeping viewing-related costs low, FinTech developers can focus their resources on developing new application features that help their products stand out in an increasingly competitive market. 

To learn more about how PrizmDoc’s Hybrid Viewing can benefit your FinTech application, talk to one of Accusoft’s PrizmDoc specialists today.

As the software industry continues to transition to web-based applications and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, developers are prioritizing flexibility more than ever. Building a unique and compelling customer experience frequently requires versatile software toolkits that are easy to customize and adapt to changing requirements.  Customizing the PrizmDoc Viewer interface makes this simple.

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer is an HTML5 viewing integration that not only provides an extensive array of viewing, conversion, and annotation features, but was also designed with customization in mind. Creative developers have several options at their disposal when they deploy this innovative solution within their applications.

PrizmDoc Viewer Interface Basics

Once PrizmDoc Viewer is integrated into an application, developers can deploy the pre-built user interface to start viewing documents and image files. Out of the box, the viewer consists of a number of components:

• Tab Navigation: PrizmDoc Viewer can perform a variety of different functions, such as basic viewing, annotation, and redaction. The Tab Navigation indicates which function is currently active.
• Tab Pane: Each tabset selected in the Navigation features a specific set of tools. They can be configured to display either vertically or horizontally.
• Status Bar: This component indicates the current page being viewed. By selecting a different page number, a user can quickly jump to another document page.
• Dialog: Extended options and settings are displayed in this menu area.
• Context Menu: Used primarily for markups, this menu allows users to change annotation properties.
• Page List: The core element of the viewer control, this component is where the document or image itself is rendered for viewing.

Any of these tabs can be disabled easily by altering the configuration parameters. For example, to disable the navigation tab for redaction, the following code could be applied:

var pluginOptions = {
    uiElements: {
        redactTab: false
    }
};

Customizing the Viewer

While developers can simply deploy the viewer interface as-is, PrizmDoc Viewer provides extensive customization features that allow them to change almost every aspect of the viewing experience. The viewer’s functionality itself is built upon the Viewer API, so changing different elements of the viewing interface doesn’t alter the rendering performance or other core PrizmDoc Viewer functionality.

Here are just a few quick customization options that can be added to the viewer with minimal effort:

Custom Buttons

Adding a customized button that performs a specific task can greatly improve the viewer’s functionality for end users. Developers can quickly add custom buttons with a bit of JavaScript and uploading an SVG icon for display.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The PrizmDoc Viewer interface already supports a variety of keyboard shortcuts that allow users to easily scroll up and down the page, adjust the zoom level, and delete selected marks. Developers can alter the existing key bindings to enable new shortcuts or create their own.

Customize Style

In order to provide a consistent brand experience, many developers choose to alter the look and feel of the viewer to match the rest of their application. PrizmDoc Viewer provides extensive controls that allow them to alter image resources, colors, toolbar sizing, icons, and more.

Reorganize Menus

All of the menus and navigation elements can be adjusted based on application needs. Developers can add or remove different viewer templates that feature unique elements for specific use cases. Each template could use different styles and feature custom tabs or markup tools.

Create/Customize Mouse Tools

Unique mouse tools can be created along with a custom button within the UI, although PrizmDoc Viewer comes with a variety of predefined mouse tools that can be deployed and customized. Creating a new mouse tool is a quick two-step process that involves some JavaScript code that first defines the tool and then updates the UI to add a button for it (usually in the annotation tab pane).

Step 1

// Create the new mouse tool. var myTool = PCCViewer.MouseTools.createMouseTool(
                 "PinkLine",
                 PCCViewer.MouseTool.Type.LineAnnotation);

// Configure the tool to draw a pink (#FF69B4) line that is 10 pixel thick myTool.getTemplateMark()
    .setColor("#FF69B4")
    .setThickness(10);

Step 2

<!-- The following markup will create a button that enables use
     of the mouse tool named "PinkLine".

     The custom attributes that are used:
      \* data-pcc-mouse-tool="PinkLine" - specifies that the button selects the mouse tool named "MyLineTool"
      \* data-pcc-context-menu="false" - specifies that a context menu is not shown for this mouse tool
     -->
<button>
    data-pcc-mouse-tool="PinkLine"
    data-pcc-context-menu="false"
    class\="pcc-icon pcc-icon-annotate-line"
    title="Pink Line Tool"\></button>

Build a Customized UI

Developers may decide that the default PrizmDoc Viewer UI isn’t quite right for their application needs. In such cases, they can easily use the available components to build a customized viewing UI that is better suited to their application and end users. Creating a custom interface allows developers to strategically place menu and button elements to improve application workflows and conform to their own user experience priorities.

Embrace the Power of Flexibility

Turning to a third-party solution for an application’s viewing and imaging needs doesn’t mean a developer has to give up control over their application’s user experience. Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer delivers powerful viewing, conversion, and annotation features in a fully customizable package that can be adapted to a wide range of application needs. Developers can use the available tools to craft a unique viewing experience from the ground up or utilize the built-in viewing interface to get their solution up and running quickly while putting off customization until later in their development cycle.

PrizmDoc Viewer’s versatile HTML5 rendering technology makes it an ideal integration for web-based applications that need the flexibility to adapt to changing user expectations. Thanks to those customization options, the application a developer brings to market can evolve over time to support a wide range of additional features throughout the product’s lifecycle. To experience the customizable power of PrizmDoc Viewer firsthand, download your free trial today.

Ever feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day? Here’s a scenario which will undoubtedly resonate with you if you are like several of our clients. You’re a senior app developer for a provider of data management solutions for the insurance industry.

There are two weeks left before you head off for vacation. Your team is working on UI and code fixes which arose out of UAT on your company’s latest major upgrade cycle. Everything was wrapping up nicely, until the product manager (PM) approached your desk with a peace offering of a double shot latte and a Philly cheesesteak sandwich.

You quickly discover that the peace offering is due to the fact that the upgrade was supposed to include a document and file management functionality, but it had been left off the project EPIC.
The PM hands you a list of functional specs, including a mobile-friendly document viewer, markup, document capture, image compression, eSignature functionality, and PDF OCR for document discoverability.

She has that “deer in the headlights” look as if you are about to go to Defcon 5. Instead, you smile, thank her for breakfast, and gather the troops for a quick scrum. Your application was built for extensibility requirements like this, and RESTful APIs are your jam.

You and your team don’t have to write the base code to meet these requirements. You and your colleagues just have to buy the API licenses, download some code, access some cloud-based functionality, and work your magic on the APIs to wrap it into your platform.

Why Labor with Lumber When You Build with Lego?

Even if you had these requirements out of the gate, you probably would have sought out some APIs to help you build, right?

At the end of the day, the goal is to increase information worker productivity and effectiveness within your client base and delivering the kind of value which ensures lasting relationships. You never want to reinvent the wheel and add more project scope than necessary.

Should your team rush to build custom functionality into their native application, and risk non-compliance with regulatory standards like HIPAA, ISO 27001 or SOC 2 or 3?

Not likely, especially when there are probably additional requirements for viewing and marking up raster and vector files. There might even be extra requirements for integration with SharePoint or CRMs.

Buying vs. Building Applications

API code can always be skinned with a custom user interface to provide a seamless user experience. Developers shouldn’t be discouraged from hacking the development process by leveraging existing code to accelerate deployments.

It’s the premise platforms like GitHub were built on. Instead of months of development work, an API/SDK package can exponentially accelerate time to market. If an application development team has adopted DevOps or Agile methods, strategies to ensure continuous development and continuous integration are key.

An article in CIOReview.com says it best: “By using APIs, you extend the capability of your development team. The key is to ensure the vendor, application, and the APIs all exceed your expectations.”

ImageGear and PrizmDoc

Organizations in regulated industries like government, healthcare, and financial services create, manipulate, and store a lot of electronic and physical documents. They often need functionalities like viewing, converting, and redacting that help them stay productive but also compliant.

The combined API packages support more file types, compress files for faster loading, and offer customers a mature, secure, and proven document viewer for sensitive files. Healthcare facilities often have devices which don’t have the capacity to manage native document viewers, so browser-based viewers offer better viewing and editing capability.

Documents are often scanned in large batches and require post-capture enhancement, such as despeckling, deskewing, and OCR to enable keyword/phrase searching within individual files and images. Need to enable your customers to remain within your application, yet complete multiple tasks? Why not enable some functionalities like:

• Converting multiple file formats into one document
• Building and capturing forms
• Watermarking
• Signing a document without importing another third-party service
• Gaining quality control on a scanned image
• Comparing two similar documents such as contracts by redlining them for legal review

Building all of this functionality is a lot of heavy lifting. Our APIs are mature, QA-vetted, and ready to integrate with apps which are coded in C, C++, Java, or .NET.
For those applications which already use PrizmDoc or ImageGear, integrating the other API into production alongside it is a seamless process. Those developers who have worked with your support team will be familiar with getting any assistance they may require.

Start with Core APIs and Extend as Business Evolves

In fact, when PrizmDoc Viewer and ImageGear work together, they provide the ability to recognize more file types, search within PDFs and images, create new documents from different file types, and reorganize content to create a brand new document.

Especially useful for businesses that process a variety of different file types, these SDK and API integrations revamp your application, making your application’s end-users more productive and efficient.

Ready to enhance your document and imaging functionality in your applications, without complex coding? Create an Accusoft account, or use your login to get started.

The COVID-19 pandemic may not be the first pandemic to impact global supply chains, but its impact has been orders of magnitude greater than previous public health crises. Businesses around the world have been forced to contend with the twin challenges of transitioning to a remote workforce and overcoming severe supply chain disruption. As 2020 winds down to a close, it’s becoming clear that the pandemic may well represent a “new normal” for logistics strategy rather than a temporary situation.

3 Critical Supply Chain Challenges 

From implementing new technology to establishing relationships with alternative vendors, organizations across multiple industries are taking steps to meet the challenges confronting their supply chains in both the immediate and long-term future. One of the biggest areas of focus is barcode integration. Although they may not seem like they belong at the forefront of innovation, barcodes are scanned more than six billion times every day and serve an incredibly important role in modern supply chain management.

Here are a few of the biggest challenges organizations are facing:

1. Supply Chain Visibility

Speed and flexibility are competitive advantages in today’s on-demand marketplace. Customers want products delivered faster and will quickly lose faith in brands that fail to meet their expectations. According to a 2019 survey of online consumers, 72.7% of respondents were unlikely to order from a company again after a poor delivery experience. Given those high stakes, it’s incredibly important for organizations to maintain high levels of visibility into their supply chains.

Barcode technology makes it possible to track products and materials throughout the entire production and distribution process. A quick scan is all that’s needed to update an item’s status every time it’s processed at a location. That information feeds into inventory tracking software that allows businesses to get a more accurate picture of how shipments move through their supply chain. This visibility makes it easier to identify potential problems and enhance overall logistics efficiency. 

2. Digital Transformation

Despite the growing emphasis on digital transformation across the economy, the average supply chain is still held back with inefficient, legacy infrastructure. Small and medium-size businesses face the greatest challenges, with only 21% of them using digital tools to integrate their supply chain operations with other departments. In the retail industry alone, bad processes and data disconnects cost companies over $500 billion annually. As the holiday season draws nearer and promises to bring with it a massive increase in online shopping, having a fully digital supply chain in place with enough speed to handle that demand is essential.

Implementing the right digital technology tools can help organizations to streamline their supply chains and gather the data they need to make better decisions. Barcode integration software is a foundational component of this transformation because it forms a bridge between the physical and digital elements of logistics management. Shipments can be instantly scanned into tracking systems to provide a wealth of data points across the supply chain, making it easier to adapt to disruptions and develop better processes. Barcode libraries also need to be able to scan and decode both traditional 1D codes and newer 2D codes quickly and accurately to keep products moving swiftly and smoothly to consumers.

3. Automation

As many organizations have put social distancing protocols in place during the pandemic to protect the health of both employees and customers, automation has become more important to supply chain performance than ever before. These COVID-19 pressures are sure to accelerate what was already a growing push toward implementing automated software and systems. Gartner even projected in 2019 that 30% of warehouse workers will be replaced by collaborative robots by 2023, which will further drive the demand for automated scanning and inventory management tools to accompany them.

For these automated systems to work effectively, they will need robust software that can withstand the difficult working conditions of warehouses, assembly lines, and distribution centers. A barcode integration that struggles to accurately read damaged or broken barcode images, for instance, won’t last very long in such an environment. The software powering automated systems must be able to function under a variety of conditions and be adaptable enough to overcome obstacles without constant oversight from on-site workers.

Unleash Your Supply Chain With Barcode Xpress

Building software capable of meeting the needs of a truly digital supply chain is no easy task. That’s especially true when it comes to integrating barcode reading capabilities into supply chain applications. With so many barcode formats in use, developers need an SDK with the ability to accurately detect, read, and write both common and uncommon barcode types used across all industries.

Accusoft’s Barcode Xpress is a multi-language barcode integration capable of reading and writing more than 30 different barcode types quickly and accurately. A truly robust SDK solution, Barcode Xpress leverages the imaging functionalities of ImagXpress to repair damaged orbroken barcodes that other readers are unable to read.

Speed

Barcode Xpress is capable of detecting and decoding multiple barcodes on a page at speeds of up to 1,000 pages per minute. It doesn’t matter where the barcode is located, what type of code it is, or how many are present. The control is able to read them regardless of orientation within milliseconds.

Accuracy

Every time Barcode Xpress detects a barcode, it not only provides the information encoded within the image, but also reports a confidence value to ensure high levels of accuracy. Damaged, broken, or poorly printed barcodes can also be scanned thanks to the SDK’s image processing capabilities. Black noise, white noise, erasures, low resolution, white line streaks, and other common barcode problems are reconstructed and scanned automatically to keep the supply chain moving.

Versatility

With the ability to detect, read, and write over 30 different barcode types, Barcode Xpress is available in multiple configurations for Windows and Linux-based operating systems. The SDK library supports 24-bit color images, 8-bit grayscale images, and 1-bit black and white images, as well as providing more than 80 additional image processing and editing functions thanks to its ImagXpress integration.

Experience Barcode Xpress Today

Easy to deploy and utilize, Barcode Xpress is a true all-in-one solution for desktop and web applications seeking barcode recognition capabilities. Just a few lines of code is all it takes to unlock the full potential of your supply chain technology.

Find out just how simple barcode integration can be with Barcode Xpress. Sign up today to download a free trial or talk to one of our SDK specialists today to learn more.

We generally think of app developers as being detail-oriented, collaborative, and not afraid to let their geek flag fly. They’re often open to change, provided they have time to plan, and you give them some context on the value the changes will bring.

The dawn of 2019 promises a shift in device platforms, application architecture, and development methodologies. The most successful programmers this year are ahead of the innovation curve because they’re reading the subreddits and GitHub forum posts. They’re ramping up their skills on Skillshare, getting nanodegrees on Udacity, and training with SaaS vendors their company contracts.

As you’ve noticed around the office, coders like comfort when working with new SDKs and APIs which can help them innovate more effectively.

Let’s look at four coding trends your development team needs to be ready for in 2019.

1. Increased Adoption of Artificial Intelligence

The rise of AI and machine learning is creating tremendous opportunities for API-savvy developers and coders. Developers can write scripts to create process automation for high-volume, low-complexity tasks around your business. Your employees can be assigned more strategic work which requires more imagination and creativity. The work that they were hoping for when you hired them.

A McKinsey study found that 47% of businesses are using some form of AI, and 31% of other businesses are piloting process automation, AI or machine learning. In the realm of document management, AI can make documents more discoverable through natural language understanding and increase security.

2. Cloud Vendors Embrace Interoperability

Remember the days when Microsoft was one walled garden of cloud services and tools, IBM and Google had their own stacks, and trying to get AWS to talk to any of them was futile? Sure you remember, because it wasn’t that long ago – maybe a few years ago. Now, IaaS providers are warming up to the reality that their customers are running Microsoft Azure, Google, IBM Clouds, and AWS in harmony.

Infrastructure, development environments, and deployments can be orchestrated from platforms like Azure DevOps. VMWare Cloud Assembly and IBM Multicloud Manager. Managing multiple cloud environments, Docker containers, and related security has never been more achievable. More cloud services options mean greater flexibility for developers.

3. Increased Adoption of DevOps Methodologies

As the demand for continuous integration and continuous delivery accelerates, more companies are adopting Agile practices and DevOps methodologies for their business. Successful businesses are dropping the practice of parking IT and line of business teams in separate silos and limiting opportunities for communication and collaboration. DevOps encourages cross-functional teaming to accelerate feature deployment and shapes coding roadmaps against defined user needs and not speculation.

DevOps practices are great for the adoption of microservices application architecture. Different application functions can have dedicated teams from across product management, development, and marketing that specialize in functions like medical imaging or mobile document viewing. These teams can meet in scrums for project work, while still collaborating with their peers across the organization.

4. Increased Use of RESTful APIs, SDKs, and Emerging Languages

As demand for innovation increases and automated code testing becomes more popular, application developers are increasingly empowered to find ways to work smarter instead of harder. APIs and SDKs are ways to leverage open, supported and tested functionality to meet business requirements like document lifecycle management.

Data from GitHub and Stack Overflow suggests JavaScript still reigns as the 800-pound gorilla of coding for the sixth consecutive year last year. Yet Python and C++ usage is increasing, and Go and TypeScript are climbing up the top 10 coding charts.

If you manage a development team and are looking to get ahead of the coding trends for 2019, we hope you find these suggestions helpful. If you’ve run across other trends you think we should add, share them with us on social media so we can make more of our readers aware of how your organization is enhancing your development efforts with tools and strategies.

Image processing is now a priority across industry lines. From legal firms to financial institutions to health organizations the ability to capture, convert, and combine documents on-demand often makes the difference between hitting project deadlines and falling behind.

As image formats outpace the ability of legacy solutions to manage and manipulate, however, a new challenge emerges. Companies need conversion, document management, and image cleanup software capable of handling multiple file types, but are they better served building their own systems or buying software solutions to help them bridge the gap? Let’s go head-to-head and see which potential processing option comes out on top. 

Round One: Targeting Consistency

Ask companies why they prefer to build their own software solutions and the answer is invariably the same, control. The work of creating new functionality from scratch is often paired with the notion of end-to-end control; since in-house developers built the image processing program they’re equipped to handle any emerging security or performance challenges.

The problem? In a world where robust digital solutions are the expectation rather than the exception, speed and consistency are the image-processing benchmarks. Staff need to know that when they go looking for image conversion and document management options, they’ll always find exactly what they’re looking for — and it will always perform as expected. 

In-house options that require regular maintenance and security updates can’t match this level of accessibility; ensuring optimal performance demands regular downtime to both implement planned updates and deal with potential problems as they occur. Fully-supported, purpose-built processing solutions, meanwhile, deliver consistent results and common functionality on-demand.

Round Two: Talking Conversion

The biggest benefit of image processing software? Conversion. The ability to intake documents and easily modify their format, adjust properties, or add essential changes. Here, building your own image processing engine comes with the benefit of specificity. If you’re dealing primarily with PDF files, create a small-scale PDF library capable of handling PDFs and turn it loose across internal networks.

Here’s where things get tricky. While introducing a new, purpose-built application solves one problem, it also creates another: app overload. As noted by recent workplace research, almost 70 percent of workers already lose up to 60 minutes per day navigating between different software solutions. Adding a new in-house tool lets them avoid searching online for a functional best-fit but also adds another app to their list and increases their total time wasted. On the developer side, building comes with the ongoing time and resource commitments necessary to create and support multiple imaging libraries — and keep up with the ongoing evolution of new image file formats.

Image processing software development kits (SDKs), meanwhile, come with conversion abilities across a host of file types. Even better? These tools integrate with existing solutions, meaning your team gets the advantage of easy image conversion without the added complication of constantly switching apps.

Round Three: Taking the Shortcut

There’s an understandable pride that comes with building apps from the ground up. In many respects, buying a software engine seems like taking a shortcut. But here’s the thing, shortcuts are faster. Even if you were designing an app from scratch, your developers would search popular code repositories to avoid repeating work someone else has already done. After all, if a great image processing tool already exists, why build another? 

Image processing SDKs simply scale up the scope of common code usage to streamline your document management, conversion, and image cleanup processes. As noted by DZone, there’s also a case here for compatibility; by laying customizable software engines on top of existing applications, you ensure that desktop, mobile, and even remote users all have access to the same functionality.

Building your own image processing program is entirely possible if you like heavy lifting, enjoy total control, and hate taking shortcuts. However, buying a full-featured engine capable of handling multiple file types across any enterprise endpoints is the ideal approach if you’re looking for ease of integration, consistent compliance outcomes, and company-wide compatibility. Learn more about ImageGear and all of its capabilities here.