Case Study

Records management leader chooses ImageTrac for state-of-the-art conversion

Downloadable media:

® scanning from Imaging

When exploding medical records overwhelm hospitals and other healthcare providers, EDCO can

provide immediate relief. EDCO is a national provider of document scanner and storing services

with one of the largest conversion centers in the United States.

Its specialty is high-volume conversion of paper to digital or microfilm. More than 200 people

are employed at its Springfield, Missouri, headquarters, which includes an underground storage

facility. To help hospitals, insurers, legal firms and other organizations solve their document

management problems, EDCO relies on production-grade ImageTrac

Business Machines, LLC (ibml).

UPgrading to digital

EDCO continually works to bring down the cost of document conversion and storage while

increasing the sophistication and value of its offering. To achieve this goal, EDCO decided to

transition from microfilm to a digital storage platform. Customers also wanted documents in

digital format instead of microfilm.

Microfilm had been a major part of the EDCO infrastructure, with more than 100 microfilm

cameras in use. Imaging Manager Bob Barnum had the job of converting the company from

microfilm to a state-of-the-art digital conversion and storage infrastructure.

After researching options for high-volume, high-speed scanning, EDCO selected the ImageTrac

II and the industry-leading scanner is now the gateway to the digital storage EDCO customers

require. “It was the clear winner for speed, ease of use, fault recovery and durability,” Barnum

said. Starting with the ImageTrac II scanner, EDCO later upgraded to three ibml ImageTrac

IV scanners for maximum throughput. As a result, EDCO explained its product offering and

identified a new source of revenue through its digital services.

Eliminating Records Overload

Paper-intensive businesses in the healthcare industry are looking for ways to control their

ever-increasing volumes of paper records. They also want the access and archiving advantages

of digital document management. “We often work with organizations that are starting to scan

in-house, but it is nearly impossible for most departments to tackle the scanning of both past

and current files,” said Barnum. “Our role is to clear file rooms of paper so past and current

documents are housed as one for a seamless transition.”

The huge capacity and tremendous speed of the ImageTrac helps EDCO get customers’ records

under control. Now, a scanning job that would have taken a year to complete can be done in

just three to four weeks. EDCO was also able to implement barcode and OCR (optical character

recognition) for indexing and fast retrieval of documents at customers’ requests. ibml’s

DocNetics™ Advanced Recognition Software reads barcodes in any orientation, so no special

handling is required.

Low Impact document prep

All types of documents can be processed for EDCO customers. Materials can include photos, EKG

strips and larger fold-out sheets that need page separation. The ImageTrac does not require a

lot of document preparation, so labor is minimized in spite of the variety of scanned documents it

must handle.

The operation runs two eight-hour shifts with seven or eight employees preparing documents

to feed the three ImageTrac scanners in order to keep the scanners running non-stop. The

ImageTrac IV scans 250 to 300 documents per minute, and EDCO estimates 200 million

documents can be scanner per year.

Flexibility for customized service

EDCO has successfully helped medical, legal, insurance and other customers convert paper

documents into digital information that can be more easily stored and accessed. EDCO takes a

consultative approach, targeting the unique needs of each business, and ImageTrac flexibility

contributes to this customized service. The fast, efficient color scanning is part of a business

model that helps customers save on costs, storage, paper and time.