Hardware

3 Essential Tips for Document Scanning in Healthcare

Healthcare documentation must be high-quality and secure. Epson can help organizations meet their scanning needs.

Donna Marbury is a journalist and award-winning social media and content strategist specializing in healthcare, technology, smart cities and culture.

Over the past few decades, healthcare organizations have been moving toward digitized workflows. In this transition, many organizations are swamped with paper from years of record keeping. While digital scanning solutions are becoming more readily available, paper isn’t going away, says Haol Yao, product manager at Epson America.

“The fact is that paper is still much easier and more familiar for a lot of people to use, and it’s going to continue to be a part of healthcare processes for a long time — and that’s the problem,” Yao says. “That’s why digital solutions to help manage all the paper and all the information in an efficient and reliable way are really important.”

Epson scanners are the entry point for getting all those documents digitized and into management systems to help organize and store information, Yao says.

“Healthcare is very information- and data-intensive. When an organization first signs up a new patient, they gather and keep a lot of information about them. From that moment on, the information on that patient must continue to be collected and stored. It grows and grows every year,” he adds.

Here are three tips healthcare IT leaders should keep in mind when considering scanner options:

DISCOVER: How Epson products and solutions can support your healthcare institution.

1. There Are Scanners for Every Line of Business in Healthcare

Epson’s lineup has scanner solutions for the particular range of needs and scenarios that healthcare organizations face, Yao says.

“For an organization that provides in-home care, there’s a portable scanner that is small and easy to carry around. It has a built-in battery or can be powered by USB and connected to a laptop,” Yao says. “Archiving departments might need a flatbed scanner that can scan larger or more bulky documents and materials.”

Epson also recognizes that the reception desk at a healthcare organization may have to manage several types of documents, so a scanner solution has to be flexible, Yao says.

“The reception desk is a good example of where you need a different kind of flexibility,” he says. “The scanner must be flexible enough to scan different kinds of documents — regular paper, such as for consent forms, but you also need to scan ID cards, insurance cards, forms of different sizes and maybe even thicker items like passports.”

Epson offers a full range of network-connected scanners for photos and graphics, checks, receipts, and a variety of documents.

“Flexible connectivity is becoming more important,” Yao says. “Some healthcare organizations want staff to connect directly to their networks, through Wi-Fi or through an Ethernet connection, instead of plugging into a laptop or a PC.”

2. Quality Matters for Healthcare Information

Healthcare organizations may receive documents that are faded, torn or dirty, so it’s important that scanners can fill in where documents are deficient, Yao says.

“There are a wide variety of conditions that a document might be in, and the scanner must be able to handle those documents and still produce high-quality scans,” he adds. “At Epson, we’ve developed image enhancement technology to help make faint lines and writing easier to see.”

Flexible connectivity is becoming more important.”

Haol Yao Product Manager, Epson America

Because documents can vary in size and width, Epson scanning devices also have paper protection technologies to monitor the condition of the documents being scanned.

“We have paper protection technologies that know if you’re feeding a lot of sheets and there’s a misfeed. The scanner will stop so that the original doesn’t get damaged,” Yao says. “Dirt detection lets the user know when the scanner should be cleaned. All of those work together to help make sure that scans are accurate and high-quality so that you’re not running into problems later.”

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3. Choose Scanners with Interoperable and Secure Hardware

Because Epson scanners have no hard drives, documents, including sensitive patient information, aren’t stored long-term, Yao explains.

“For high-security applications, we also have scanner models that support authentication. A scanner can be set up so that users can’t access it unless they log in with a password or with a badge and a badge reader,” Yao says. “If you have a high-security application and want to restrict access, we have scanners that can do that as well.”

Scanners also can work with other software and hardware seamlessly help make technology easier to deploy, according to Yao.

“Almost all of our scanners come with both TWAIN and ISIS drivers. Those are standard drivers that are used for scanners, and the vast majority of the document management software platforms out there use one of those to communicate with the scanner,” Yao says. “Our scanners are easy to deploy, as they work with a wide variety of software that you may use to manage your documents.”

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