The Green Sheet 049

GreenSheet Keeping You Informed

M a rc h /A p ril 2 0 0 8

Is s u e 49

The forem ost authority on the Information M anagem ent industry, the Green Sheet provides news, views and technical reviews from around the world

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Business documents and information are often stored in conventional filing cabinets and/or unstructured electronic folders - emails,word processor files, spreadsheets, pdfs etc.

How much time and money is wasted in your organisation looking for documents?

But, why put up with fragmented filing when you could bring together all documents - from your email system, your PC network and your filing cabinets - then store and organise them within one unified, accessible and secure environment?

How easily can you lay your hands on that vital email, hard copy document or electronic file?

windream document management software is the uncomplicated and affordable way to deliver readily available desktop access to documents and business information.

The unique and patented feature of windream is that it’s completely integrated with Windows. There is no additional application interface as with other document management systems, making it truly straightforward to adopt and use.

To learn more about how windream can help bring your business information together, contact

Email: info@ccdata.co.uk Web: www.ccdata.co.ukwww.windream.com Telephone: +44 (0)844 884 1400 (UK) +44 (0)1582 463606 (International)

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...and it’s Goodnight from me

MAR/APR

Yes, it’s true - I will no longer be chasing you for advertising or hounding you for editorial. That role will be taken over by John Baker from now on as I am taking early retirement. Sincere thanks to all who have supported me over the past 21 years.

There have been many changes over the past 20+ years, but surprisingly some things haven’t altered at all.

than any of those thrown up by the new technology. I don’t remember anything like the scandals we have been hearing about recently, with lost or stolen disks and laptops.

hands, but I’m sure that it will go from strength to strength with a younger pair of hands at the helm and, let’s be honest, little real competition in our market place.

Many of the companies with which I was dealing then are, alas, no longer with us. They have either closed down or been swallowed up by the competition and most of the Microfilm has, of course, lost personnel have died, retired its place as the favourite or left the industry.

•storage medium, though some might argue that it was The future of Green a safer, more secure system Sheet is now of my

Now, with the Directory going global the full set is almost complete. If I have one regret about leaving it is that I will miss the push to make the Directory truly international, as I believe that it will be a real hit, particularly in the USA. ■

For instance, when I first launched The Micrographics Marketplace in 1986 everyone was talking about the “paperless office” being just around the corner - they are still saying exactly the same thing today.

3

08

Inform ation Security

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W atershed Year

Your future contact w ill be: johnbaker@greensheetmedia. com

Magazine Advertising Rate Card 2007 (Hard Copy & PDF) Double Page Spread Outside Cover Inside Cover Full Page Half Page Third Page Quarter Page Eighth Page Large Banner Small Banner Per SCC

Type Area (H x W mm) 275 x 400 275x190 2 7 5 x 190 2 7 5 x 190 1 3 8 x 1 9 0 or 2 7 5 x 9 3 90 x 190 or 275 x 63 1 3 8 x 9 3 or 69 x 190 69 x 93 or 93 x 69 24 x 190 12 x 190 10x60

Cost (GBP) £1200.00 £ 800.00 £ 750.00 £ 650.00 £ 400.00 £ 325.00 £ 250.00 £ 150.00 £ 115.00 £ 75.00 £ 27.00

Cost (US$) $2340.00 $1560.00 $1463.00 $1268.00 $ 780.00 $ 634.00 $ 488.00 $ 293.00 $ 224.00 $ 146.00 $ 53.00

H ealthcare m>

Product News

Discounts fo r m ultiple insertions on same order - 5% for 2x, 10% for 3x and 20% for 6x issues (Whole year) Additional Discounts - Agency, 10% and Pre-paym ent, 15%.

Above discounts can not be combined.

Other advertising options available, i.e. Mailer cover, insert, cover cards, etc. Please Email/Call for details & quote.

For GSM Online and GSM Directory Advertising please see w w w.greensheetm edia.com /advertising.htm Green Sheet Magazine is published by Green Sheet MEDIA, and is registered with the UK Post Office as a newspaper.

ISSN 1476-3842 Printed by Stones the Printers, of Banbury (UK) www.stonestheprinters.co.uk, on to 10Ogsm Regency paper stock, by a Heidelberg 10 colour Speedmaster. www.uk.heidelberg.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise without the express permission of the publishers Green Sheet MEDIA.

Look out for . .

3 - Editor’s Comments 20 - Scanner Guide 21 - Test Report

All material © Green Sheet MEDIA 2007 (except where otherwise indicated)

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26 - The value of paper 28 - Diary Dates 30 - Tale Piece

ADVERTISERS’ INDEX AIIM Roadshow .................................................................. 6 CC Data ............................................................................... 2 Classified Advertisem ents............................................. 29 Data Imaging & Archiving C o .........................................18 Genus G ro u p ...................................................................... 9 Graphic Data .................................................................... 19 M IS L ................................................................................... 13

MicroVue ...........................................................................26 nextScan ...........................................................................32 O IT U K ................................................................................. 19 Stor-a-File ...........................................................................7 Upton Services .................................................................. 8 Wicks & Wilson ................................................................ 31

A v it a lly im p o r ta n t a s p e c t o f D o c u m e n t a n d In f o r m a t io n M a n a g e m e n t is th e g u a r a n te e o f s e c u rity . As w e h a v e w itn e s s e d in th e r e c e n t p a s t, la c k o f s e c u rity ca n c o m e a t a v e ry h ig h c o s t.

SECURING DATA

by Christine Andrews, Director, DQM Group security measures is over.

Instead, there are specific databased solutions that can be applied, which allow an organi­ sation both to prove the breach and track its perpetrators.

There are various means of doing this, whether electronic or physical.

However, all involve the use of ‘seed names’ Perhaps most importantly, - unique names for real data security is being addresses, which are inserted addressed almost Data security breaches have exclusively from the point of into a database. By applying littered the news of late. All view of stopping data leaving these unique identifiers they kinds of organisations have the organisation through, or to, can be shown to relate to a been affected from government an unauthorised party. Firewalls specific data set, creating an departments to well-known and encryption routines help audit trail and evidence of any financial institutions. And the prevent illegal access to data loss. problem does not seem to be sensitive information.

The In a real life example, the direct lessening.

Research we problem with this approach, marketing industry uses such released last year found that whilst absolutely necessary, is ‘sleepers’ as standard practice there had been over 25 million that such measures cannot to guard against unauthorised exposures of personal records protect against computer theft, use of commercial mailing lists. to potential theft and fraud over loss or theft of data on physical Now corporations and a 12-month period highlighting media, or loss/theft of physical government bodies are the enormous security records. In any case, simply beginning to adopt the same challenge facing British public making personal data difficult approach in order to monitor and private sector organi­ to steal is no real deterrent to data abuse. Even in the early sations in today’s data-rich the criminal mind, and may stages of such techniques in society. often be regarded by the the wider commercial and Organisations of every kind fraudster as a stimulating public sectors, there have been keep records on their clients challenge. Furthermore, these cases of pre-emptive discovery, and customers, which is vital procedures cannot help trace where unauthorised data usage for a whole array of business the fraudsters once a breach (in fact data theft) has been identified, which would have practices such as sales activity, has occurred. marketing campaigns and If data security is compromised, otherwise lain undiscovered. customer service. Transactional it does not mean the job of data UK public and private sector processes such as billing, credit and finance requirements all involve maintaining detailed personal records. The need for more sophisticated methods of tracing fraudsters and data thieves has never been greater.

SECURITY

organisations are holding an increasing volume of data on customers and citizens. We invest a great deal of faith in companies when we entrust them with our personal details.

If such organisations are to continue to be allowed to use this information to improve customer service, they also have to take on the responsi­ bility of keeping it safe and secure. Security breaches must be monitored and investigated and budget must be set aside, wherever possible, for external compliance and security auditing to take place so that best practice standards can be met. Equal attention needs to be given to ways of tracking and tracing abusers and fraudsters after a data breach has occurred, so that the perpetrators might more frequently be brought to justice.

The data industry should organise for the compulsory seeding of commercial data sets to allow for tracking license violations.

It should^ also establish an accreditation system that audits the security standards in place. Public granting of a certificate would support consumer confidence in the protection of their personal data. ■

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Crimeware crimewave During August ‘07, Finjan SecureBrowsing alerted users to more crimeware than in the previous three months combined Finjan Inc., a leader in secure web gateway products, announced that its Finjan SecureBrowsing has uncovered a growing number of specific cases of crimeware toolkits (malicious code software packages) used by criminals in August, more than in the previous three months combined. The increased usage of crimeware toolkits by cybercriminals was forecast by Finjan in its recently published quarterly and monthly reports.

Finjan SecureBrowsing is a leading browser plug-in that adds safety ratings to URLs of search results, Web 2.0 and other popular websites.

Leveraging the same patented real-time content inspection technology as implemented in Finjan’s Secure Web Gateway solutions, Finjan SecureBrowsing identified 10 different types of crimeware toolkits in August alone. These crimeware toolkits are being sold by hackers for only a few hundred dollars, and are being used by criminals on the web today.

NeoSploit, IcePack, WebAttacker, WebAttacker2 and MultiExploit toolkits, as well as new toolkits such as random.js, vipcrypt, makemelaugh and dycrypt.

Each of these crimeware toolkits is being updated frequently to include recent exploits and new anti-forensic techniques that allow them to bypass and escape detection by traditional signature, reputation and URL based security products. The dozens of versions for each of the crimeware toolkits provide the basis for hundreds of unique toolkits in use by cybercriminals today. The dramatic increase in the use of these crimeware toolkits was forecast in Finjan’s Malicious Page of the Month report for May 2007.

Finjan SecureBrowsing has also identified dozens of active criminals using these crimeware toolkits. As indicated in its Malicious Page of the Month report for July 2007, Finjan detected 58 criminals which have used the MPack toolkit to successfully infect over August’s crimeware toolkit list 500,000 unique users in a includes the known MPack, single month.

During August, Finjan - is also on a constant rise. An of the Finjan SecureBrowsing alerted users analysis to crimeware found on SecureBrowsing data indicates compromised financial and that more than 90% in the use government sites as well as on of code obfuscation to infect many top-ranked portals and end-user PCs with crimeware.

Web 2.0 sites. On a single day In addition, as recently noted on during August, Finjan ZDNet post Finjan SecureBrowsing issued alerts SecureBrowsing successfully on 300 MySpace unique alerted users to a crimeware profiles referencing potentially toolkit used on the malicious content on profile compromised Bank of India layouts. website, known as the IcePack Finjan SecureBrowsing also toolkit. identified six active affiliation Finjan SecureBrowsing is programs (iframedollar, iframebiz, available for download at: iframe911, iframestat, Neon, www.securebrowsing.finjan. com Vera) that typically pay website Finjan’s Web Security Trends owners for infecting their Reports are available for visitors with crimeware. Such download at: affiliation programs utilise the www. finjah. com/TrendReports “ iframe” method described in Finjan’s Malicious Page of the detail in Finjan’s Web Security Month reports are available for Trends Report Q2 2007. Each download at: affiliation program is present on www. finjan. com /M POM hundreds of websites infecting their visitors for cash.

Finjan SecureBrowsing is a free The prevalence of code service that proactively alerts users to potential obfuscation - a technique web commonly used to bypass malicious content hiding behind traditional signature, reputation links of search results, ads and and URL based solutions that other selected web pages. ■ was predicted in Finjan’s Web For more information please Security Trends Report Q4 2006 visit www.finjan.com.

Tricorn unveil Attorney Document Review Services Tricorn Document Management, a company specialising in the electronic management of legacy and current documents for a global clientele, will shortly unveil its newly instituted Attorney Document Review Services. This service extension was brought about through Tricorn’s recent acquisition of Apex Document Solutions, a well-known and respected company with an excellent reputation throughout the litigation support industry.

Tricorn already provides a full range of high quality costefficient document coding and indexing services for litigation support companies, law firms and corporate counsels around the world. This expansion of their current offerings will allow Tricorn to deliver both domestic and off-shore document reviews at cost-effective prices.

As these initial reviews generally represent some 80% of electronic discovery costs,

Visit the GSM Directory at www.greensheetmedia.com/directory

the savings to Tricorn clients is considerable. Tricorn has affirmed that whether a review is domestic, offshore or a combination, each project will be conducted by experienced U.S. attorneys with Tricorn providing full project management.

In discussing this addition to Tricorn’s services Sameer Sheth, Vice-President, North American Sales, said: “We are very excited to be able to round

out our offerings to the legal community. Our clients can now count on us to fulfill all of their service requirements regardless of the type of support they need.”

Tricorn, a division of Tricorn India Ltd., provides electronic management of legacy and current documents for its global clientele. ■ Visit www.tricomdata.com

SECURITY

6

n you really reco event ol

By Carl Bradbury MBCI, Senior Consul! carl.bradbury@siemens.com Have you ever asked yourself or your staff that crucial question?

Is the answer always an irrevocable and resounding yes?

What are objectives?

your

\iilinuity S recovery Time Since Incident

Firstly the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) or how quickly What exactly does “yes" mean do I want services running and what are we saying? Well again? Secondly the Recovery that very much depends on who Point Objective (RPO) or at what you are asking. Ask the ICT point in my processing cycle do manager and they will I want the services recovered concentrate on ICT disasters, and how much data am I ask your business managers and prepared to lose? And thirdly is they may well focus on the the often forgotten Recovery destruction of an office. In Priority or in what sequence do I general, most people will think of want to resume my services? the “total loss” scenario the Now let’s introduce the word disaster conjures up. “maximum tolerable period of Now, what if we replace the disruption” (MTPD). The following word “disaster” with “service diagram shows the basic interruption” would your answer incident reporting and resolution change? Now let me put an process. element of doubt in your mind As you can see from figure 1, and the re-ask the question at there are several elements, these the end of this article. Will your are: report, investigate, decide confidence in the “yes” still be and act. So at what point does as strong? the outage and recovery clock start ticking? The answer will

Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (Business Expected RTO)

S

’

Decision Making Process

ln~

Recovery Process (ICT departments understanding of the RTO) Act

Invoke Disaster Recovery Invocation Lead Time

Recovery Time

Figure 1. Incident reporting and recovery process depend on who you ask. A business person may well start the clock from the time the service became unusable. The ICT or recovery manager will start the clock from the time they are authorised to start the recovery and the recovery begins. The business when defining their recovery requirements probably intended the RTO to mean the MTPD. Let’s talk recovery capability Let’s assume the business has stated 24 hours as the RTO/MTPD, let’s disregard the RPO and assume the recovery

strategy deployed will achieve the required RPO. The ICT manager has performed numerous tests and has documented evidence that services can be recovered within the required timescales. Recent tests demonstrate that services can actually be resumed within 23 hours. The ICT manager, when asked the question “can you recover our services within 24 hours” , answers with a confident “yes” with the caveat that their recovery clock starts from when a disaster has been declared and the recovery activities have started.

lis a iim r o a d s h o w 2008 2 8 th A p ril - G la s g o w

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SECURITY

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Does this sound like your organi­ sation? Let’s re-ask the question “can you really recover services within the required timescales?”

Now, before you answer, have you considered the “invocation lead time” and the fact that the ICT manager requires 23 hours to perform their element of the recovery?

seamlessly without any major dramas by “forward fixing” (resolving the incident locally).

For “total loss” (destruction of your data centre) it’s obvious, the services will not be resumed by “forward fixing” so invoking your disaster recovery plan and utilising your disaster recovery data centre becomes your only option.

The decision to invoke is blindingly obvious for “total loss” incidents.

But what if the incident is less catastrophic?

Let’s assume you have not invested in a “high availability” solution and one of the servers critical to your organisation fails.

The calls have come into the service desk and the investi­ gation has identified the errant server.

You try and restart the server but it fails, you call an engineer and they establish that the system board needs replacing.

How long has this taken so far?

Remember the MTPD clock is ticking.

The question is can the server be repaired within the MTPD? Realistically the answer is probably no. Why? The part needs to be ordered (if it’s in the parts catalogue) and will need to be fitted.

You could try and restore the operating system, applications and data on another server.

Good idea? Well not really, the “new” server is probably of a Typically many service incidents different specification, so any are reported, investigated, and backups you have will not have resolved well within the required the right drivers etc. and are time frames and without any unlikely to be of use. You will significant impact to the need to reinstall the operating business. For example, a user system and applications from may contact the service desk scratch, make any necessary because they have deleted a file configuration changes manually or forgotten their password; then restore the data from tape. these are usually resolved within How long has it been since the minutes. initial service outage and how long will this take?

The key questions that the initial investigation must answer are, a) You could always invoke your What is the cause? b) What is disaster recovery plan but the the impact? c) What is the incident is already several hours corrective action? d) How old and would you really want to quickly can services be invoke the full disaster recovery resumed? and e) Can services plan for a single server failure, be resumed within the MTPD? bearing in mind you will have to return to normal operations at For minor incidents this happens some point.

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Conclusion recovery time. So let’s assume The MTPD is what the business that the invocation lead time is a sees as its RTO. This is maximum of 4 hours. This leaves measured from the time the just 20 hours for the recovery to initial service outage occurs be performed. In our example through to service resumption. this is not possible as the best time achieved is 23 hours so The ICT manager sees the RTO what can we do? as the amount of time allowed to The answer may well range from recover the service once the implementing a greater level of recovery has been authorised resilience and removing single and is started. points of failure (why have an outage if you don’t have to?)

As in our example, where the through to redesigning your MTPD is 24 hours and the entire recovery strategy so your recovery tasks for total loss take recovery phase can be 23 hours, then the recovery must completed within the 20 hours start within 1 hour of the initial allowed. service outage. Realistically this is unlikely to happen. So how do Finally, let’s ask the question one we address this discrepancy? more time “Can you recover your services following an incident, If the MTPD is 24 hours, we need either component failure or total to apportion this between the loss, within the required time invocation lead time and the frame?” ■

Business Development Manager Stor-a-File is a medium sized Records Storage and Imaging Business with sites in the East Midlands and London. Established in 1976 the company is family owned and employs 120 staff.

Our key values are a long term and courteous approach in our business dealings whilst being responsive to our ever changing market.

As part of our succession planning we would like to introduce a personable individual into our small team, with primary emphasis on customer contact, maintaining relationships and developing new opportunities.

We would welcome applications from individuals who are “people” people and who would like to share in our objective of growing the business.

A competitive salary, commision, car and other benefits will be provided.

Please forward your cv and current salary details to Simon@storafile.co.uk or Simon Cockbill, Stor-a-File, Brookland House, Brookland Road, Leicester LE2 SAB.

Stor-a-File Secure Document Storage and Retrieval

We are an Investor in People, and an equal opportunities employer.

SECURITY

One Stop Security Shop Avanquest Solutions launch their ‘One Stop Security Shop i

2008 has already provided us with more worrying news about data loss and highlighted security breaches.

“Within the space of four weeks covering October and November last year HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) lost around 15,000 Standard Life customers’ details on one CD, and 25 million child benefit records on two other CDs, containing names, national insurance numbers, dates of birth, addresses, bank details and pension data.” explained Nigel Trevena of Avanquest. “ Like USB devices, iPods, MP3 players, Smartphones and other form s of removable media, CDs are small and easily misplaced. They are just as easily hidden when stolen.

of company and clientconfidential information is paramount, not least because of the Data Protection Act 1998, and the ease with which data is stored on blank CDs and then lost is mirrored by the fact that the House Of Commons Justice Select Committee has recently recom m ended that reckless or repeated breaches of data security should become a criminal offence.”

★

Classic PC Guardian locks for laptop and desktop PCs are manufactured using above industry standard, heavy duty, aircraft quality multi strand cable construction.

★ ‘Ezolution’ keyed and combination locks secure From the BBC came ‘Clarkson laptops in car boots or to stung after bank prank’ which fixed office furniture in a showed how easy it is to use classroom or conference stolen data for criminal means location. This retractable (http://news.bbc.co.Uk/1/hi/ent lock is compact so fits neatly ertainm ent/7174760.stm) and into a laptop bag.

“Tougher data laws needed” , say MPs’ identifying how ★ USB locks ensure no seriously the government are unauthorised media storage taking the issue of data loss. devices can be connected, helping to eliminate the The demand for security at all seepage of company data. levels is proven, so Avanquest

“Therefore, with encryption software readily available, there Solutions is launching their really is no excuse for data on ‘One Stop Security Shop’, CDs not to be encrypted so that selling security solutions for at least it should be individuals, through SME’s right inaccessible if it falls into the up to enterprise security for wrong hands. After all, it is large corporate organisations. common knowledge that online fraudsters make money selling The ‘One Stop Security Shop’ stolen personal data to each uniquely provides security other, and the more data they applications and support have on an individual the more services. easily they can defraud them.

The first line of defence “So, in this age of increasing - NAIL IT DOWN high-tech computer-based ★ Anti-theft solutions secure criminal activity, the securing more than just PCs. Secure

U P T O N

any device with a security slot (monitors, TVs, VCR’s, peripheral and lab equipment).

The second line of defence - SECURING THE PC DATA ★

A Guardian Edge hard disk encryption solution delivers strong pre-boot user authen­ tication and full disk encryption, so if data is lost or stolen it is at least useless to the thief.

★

Email is commonly used to transmit sensitive or confidential information.

Cryptzone’s Secured eMail solution provides easy to use

and powerful end to end email encryption to remove the risk of data leaks.

The third line of defence - PREVENT THE LEAKS ★

Controlguard endpoint access manager prevents information leakage and unauthorised access to ANY device or interface. Control, shield and secure your network from the outside world.

★

Sandisk Cruzer Enterprise USB flash drives meet compliance regulations.

Drives store files in an encrypted, passwordprotected partition. Central Management and Control (CMC) add-on software from Sandisk tracks mobile data coming or leaving your company.

Nigel Trevena concludes “There are so many security vendors and solutions on the market that it can sometimes be bewildering to know where to start. By combining a range of security solutions to suit all budgets and needs with back­ up support services, Avanquest is aiming to take the strain out of the security challenge.”

For help with your Security Audit 2008, please contact Avanquest at 01752 895100 or security@avanquest. co. uk

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9

Have you considered MFP security?

These days, most businesses protect their technology by investing in a robust firewall, upto-date anti-virus protection, software updates and more.

However, they fail to extend that protection to their multifunc­ tional printers (MFPS).

modern multifunctional devices are more than simple printers and copiers.

They’re also scanners and sophisticated communication systems, giving unauthorised users the opportunity to scan confidential documents and email them off to someone else.

So what are the risks?

They could be someone To mitigate against this Canon unauthorised trying to view the has a range of document and security options information stored within your hardware MFP hard drive, or a hacker available: gaining access via the network. ★ Secure watermark Or, it might be as simple as ★ Confidential watermark leaving confidential documents ★ Electronic signature uncollected, for all to see. ★ Secure document release C^non has created security ★ Secure mailboxes solutions to protect your printing ★ Secure printing environment in two areas: ★ Department ID codes ★ Single sign-on 1) Document and Hardware ★ Job log conceal Security It’s all too simple to send a ★ Simple device log in document to print, get distracted ★ Cassette locks and end up forgetting about it. 2) Network and Data security By the time you get round to Over the last few years, simple picking up the document, printers have evolved into someone else could have taken multifunctional imaging devices it, read its contents or even that store data on a hard drive in made a copy. exactly the same way a It’s also easy to forget that

computer does.

However, without adequate protection,

unauthorised users can simply extract or reprint any confidential documents that have just been printed.

At the same time, external threats have grown too. With the amount of sensitive data now being sent over IP networks, high performance security on all your networking devices is vital, which include only authorised computers and devices which can connect to your network and printers.

Some of the network and data security options available from Canon are: ★ Deactivation of network protocols, ports and applications ★ IP address range setting, ★ MAC address filtering, ★ IP service control ★ Encrypted communication ★ Desk erasure ★ Secure data transfer ★ Hard disk data encryption ★ Hard disk removal Internationally recognised standards Canon has developed data

Canon DR-2010C NEW + DR-2510C

from

encryption kits which have been evaluated against the Common Criteria program.

This is a recognised global standard set by international security agencies. For highly sensitive environments Canon is also able to remove the devices hard disk, for shredding at end of life, for ultimate peace of mind.

In summary Security is undoubtedly a hot topic. As with any complex area like this it is advisable to seek expert advice to gain a full understanding about what the pertinent issues are for your business and what solutions are on offer to help keep your documents and data secure.

Did you know? ★ 53% of office employees have found confidential documents on the printer (IDC survey 2005) ★ 1 in 10 workers has stolen a dataset or business contact details from the office (IDC Survey 2005) ★ 80% of business fraud is perpetrated by employees (Gartner2006)

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SECURITY

10

2007 - A watershed year

by Laurie Varendorff It is my honest belief that 2007 try had a range of photo­ will go down in the history of the graphic, heat processed, elec­ microfilm/imaging industry as trostatic (wet & dry) equipped the year when the DESKTOP reader printers with various size MICROFILM SCANNER was print outputs from a number of released internationally to the American and European manu­ cries of relief from the silent facturers. Those that come to mass of users of microfilm mind and most familiar to this equipment worldwide. audience will be Kodak, 3M (Minnesota Mining & The public have been bom­ Manufacturing), (Bell & Howell), barded with the announcement Micro Design of the USA and of the [greatly exaggerated] Imtec, Oce, Regma, Schaut, DEATH of MICROGRAPHICS Microbox of Europe, plus Ricoh since the 1980’s with the of Japan and various other release of the IBM Personal organisations.

Computer and the DOS operat­ ing system from a new start-up The early 1980’s saw major organisation Microsoft and its changes in the process used in leader William (Bill) H. Gates III. reader printers to more user friendly table or desktop mod­ First, a little micrographic his­ els using the liquid electrostatic tory starting from around the process with premixed liquids 1970’s. And who better to pro­ of the black toner and clear car­ vide you with that history but rier in a single bottle from yours truly, as my five year old Canon, Minolta and Bell & granddaughter continues to Howell. remind me. Grandpa you are VERY OLD and you will DIE 3M continued their dry silver soon. My mission in life is to paper revenue stream with the prove her misguided thoughts model 500 for various microfilm wrong for as many years possible. formats and later the 800 for microfiche plus a range of My first introduction to 35mm engineering drawing Micrographics was in 1974 as models. Then the Fuji reader the State Manager of the Rank printer arrived on the scene with Xerox (the UK part of the Xerox their dry electrostatic single empire) CopiCentre located in component toner models the Perth Western Australia with the FMRP30 and 40 which provided Xerox model 1824 a DIN A2 = Fuji with market leadership for a ANSI 18 x 24 inch output aper­ short period of time until the ture card printer (no viewer) and arrival of the plain paper reader the model copyflo high speed printer era. I observed several 16mm roll microfilm printer Fuji model FMRP 30’s still oper­ which printed onto continuous ating in the main Winnipeg rolls of paper from around Public Library in October 2007.

157mm (5 inches) up to 330mm (13 inches) wide which you later The mid 1980’s saw a giant leap cut into pages with a hand trim ­ forward in the design and ease mer. Great fun!!! of use of reader printers with the release of the compact In 1976 I made a giant leap PLAIN PAPER Canon model backwards to the Carl Zeizz PC70 followed by the model 16/35mm enlarger and photo­ PC80 (with A4 size print output) graphic rapid access processor based on the successful throw to produce up to DIN - A1 at away toner and drum cartridge 841 x 594mm (ANSI D at 24 x of the PC20 photocopier.

36 inch) size, chemically processed Canon stole the show with prints and transparencies. We these two units plus the larger produced hundreds of thou­ A3 output models starting with sands of dollars’ worth of this the NP580 and NP680 mode output via hand produced units with the addition of the biimages from 16 and 35mm modal NP780 unit. microfilm of maps, drawings, but mainly seismic data for the Minolta was in catch-up mode petroleum exploration industry. with the release of their RP500 series of plain paper reader In the late 1970’s and early printers. As an example in the 1980’s the micrographic indus­ period 1985 through 2000 in

FEATURE

Western Australia, in excess of 900 Canon Plain Paper reader printers were installed while Minolta’s installation base was a little over 100 units, or around a 10:1 ratio.

that if he sold it he was to make me a gift of part of the monies paid. It is now five plus years on and I have yet to see any funds.

The ST200 from ST Imaging was released in mid 2004 and Nothing much changed until the was the initial digital viewing/ late 1990s early 2000s with scanning/printing design con­ both Canon and Minolta going cept that worked thus providing Digital with the scanning of the a break with the standard BIG microfilm and printing direct to IRON products from Canon and non intelligent laser printers via Minolta. The ST200 gained SCSI interfaces. Later they both good traction with Public and provided the capability to save University Libraries being the the scanned microfilm images main market for the product. in various file formats to hard OK, enough about the recent disk or the media of choice at past. What about the basis of the time. this article of 2007 being the Over the period commencing in watershed year for the the 1980s the big USA and Micrographic/lmaging Industry?

European players saw no future With great fanfare and with the in micrographics and effectively bell towers tolling its virtue, the left the market to the Japanese.

MICROFILM PRODUCT OF Fuji, Minolta and Canon thrived THE 21 ST CENTURY (in my not humble opinion) was with new technology and the so open marketplace vacated by released to the international the US giants Kodak, Bell & micrographic market in January Howell and 3M. In the 1990s, 2007. when they realised that they That product is the ScanPro had vacated the market too model 1000 Digital Microfilm soon, Kodak, Bell & Howell and Viewer/Scanner/Printer and its 3M all rebadged products from PowerScan Software.

Canon and Minolta. Some man­ ufacturers still rebadge these Japanese products today.

More recently in the early 2000’s we have observed the entry of smaller lower volume manufacturers entering the micrographic market as the major US, European and Japanese players lose interest and direction in the field of micrographic equipment manu­ facture and marketing. Minolta signalled their departure from the micrographic arena in Australia in February 2006 when the national distributor changed to the distribution of the Canon micrographic product range and the Minolta micrographic equipment ceased be marketed in this country Enter the ImageMouse via Anacomp the manufacturer and Kodak the reseller (at least in Australia). The least said about the ImageMouse the better. I sold one in 2002 and the client still hates me for that digres­ sion. I gave the ImageMouse demonstration unit to a col­ league on the understanding

What is the BIG DEAL about the ScanPro model 1000 Digital Microfilm Viewer/Scanner/Printer and its PowerScan Software?

1. Its size - with its low profile and dimensions of only 190 x 305 x 406mm (7.5in x 12in x 16in) sized footprint fits almost anywhere.

2. Its reliability - the ScanPro 1000 has shown its capability to run and keep running in casual and production environments.

3. Its lens range - e.g. 7 x magnification low to 54x magnification high or the new 8x magnification low to 100x magnification high capability.

4. Its ability to view/scan and print from negative or positive microfilm plus micro opaques and provide the

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11 best image quality available from any desktop, walk up user device from any manufacturer.

5. Its ease of use - there are no knobs or buttons on the ScanPro model 1000 Digital microfilm viewer/scanner/ Printer, all operator interaction is via the PC monitor, keyboard & mouse.

6. Its setup and instant recall of any microfilm type or micro opaque format in your collection. When an end user/client opens the onscreen Icon Folder & selects the format required, the darkness or lightness, film type (negative or ' positive), orientation (land­ scape or portrait, right reading or correction of a mirror image (if the roll film is wound upside down on the spool across the holding), zoom, auto focus, scan type (greyscale or black & white), scan size, DPI setting at 100, 200, 300, 400 or 600 are pre­ set plus the ability to zoom into any section of the image via the onscreen magnifier are available for the end user/clients convenience.

7. The viewer/monitor screen can be 15 inch, 17 inch, 20 inch, 24 inch or higher at the end user/clients discretion.

8. The ability to print out to a local or network printer of choice, be it DIN A4 (ANSI A) A3 (ANSI B), A2 (ANSI C), A1 (ANSI D), or A0 (ANSI E).

9. The ability of the PowerScan Software to save an image in a range of file formats in single or multipage into one file ID. 10. The ability of the PowerScan Software to save an image to a local or remote hard drive, a thumb or USB drive, or to email or fax images across the office or around the world via the internet.

11. To be able to drive the ScanPro 1000 and the PowerScan Software remotely from anywhere across tbe globe via the internet, e.g. You, as the end user/client, do not have to be at the ScanPro 1000 to experience its wonders. If the ScanPro 1000 is in New York and you reside in London, Hey Presto you can run the ScanPro 1000 from your location at no cost of ownership. WOW!!!!

1. A single zoom lens to cover the entire range of A. The film movement and magnifications (nobody monitor image had to move wanted to change lenses). together in “ lock step” . This 2. Simple to operate at every was an absolute must. We step of the process. The had seen too many product approach went something failures because this had not I have been privileged to be like this: why can't it be done been accomplished. provided with some history in one step? If it can be done regarding the birth of the con­ B. It had to provide a high in one step, why can't it be resolution image at all cept of this product dating back done automatically without magnifications. to the early 1990’s the progres­ user intervention? sion to today’s wonder product C. Scan times had to be short. a. Large, simple-to-use

by Jim Westoby, Todd Kahle D. Had to be designed for the graphical button interface rigors of public use. and the team at e-lmage Data. with tool tips.

E. Had to be a small desktop, b. Automatic background The details are provided below compact operation. processing for image and Jim states, “ Here is some F. Had to be a platform for enhancement, image development background: Our product expansion. movement, brightness, interest in a video based micro­ G. The software needed to be contrast, straightening, film product goes back to the predicated on exceptional cropping. mid 1990's. ease-of-use. c. What-you-see-is-whatyou-get - WYSIWYG Laurie Varendorff, ARM A, a form er RMAA operation to eliminate the W estern Australia Branch president and need for multiple scans. d. Secure screen LOCK national director, has been involved in mode for public use. records m anagem ent and the m icro­ e. Customisable tools sets. f. Save and restore settings. graphic industry for 37 years. g. On-screen HELP.

If you have never been exposed to the features and benefits offered by the ScanPro 1000 then do yourself a favour and track one down to have a look at its revolutionary capabilities.

1. General, we started with:

He has his own microfilm equipm ent sales & support organisation and con­ sulting & training business near Perth, W estern Australia, and has tutored in recordkeeping and archival storage & preservation at P e rth ’s Edith C ow an University.

C ontact him via email at: Laurie. Varendorff@ gmail.com “The recurring stumbling block 2. Specifications defined and was always finding the right based on user feedback: package of technologies at the For this part of the specification right price point to make a e-lmage Data demonstrated video based product viable. product concepts, provided “ It was early 2004 when we focus studies, and gathered were first able to put a technol­ input & feedback from over two ogy package together at an hundred public use patrons, acceptable price that matched librarians, and a mix of industry with our vision of a competitive users. video based scanner. That was Although they got many of the our milestone event for moving specifications right the first forward to a product specifica­ time, there were others they tion phase. And, that is the needed to rework, some several point at which we started the times, to get the required detailed research to make sure results. Throughout the design we tied down the product per­ phase there was a great deal of formance specifications. effort centred on incorporating “The (yet to be named product) user input. This did slow the was the most heavily development process but, in researched (to date) product hindsight, it resulted in a better that e-lmage Data had ever product. designed” .

Here is what they incorporated The specifications were split into the product design based into two groups: on their customer research:

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They say for certain that without the customer based research during development, e-lmage Data would have missed some of these points and run the risk that the hardware design would not have allowed them to be added later.

They added that it took much longer and more money to get to market than anticipated but the reward has been the prod­ uct acceptance that they have received from customers.

The ScanPro model 1000 Digital Microfilm Viewer/Scanner/Printer and its PowerScan Software along with Jim Westoby and Todd Kahle of e-lmage Data (the product manufacturer) will (in this reviewer’s opinion) be the unit and designers that will receive the votes from end users/clients, resellers and micrographic specialists to allow their induction into the Micrographic Hall of Fame - if such an entity existed.

The year 2007 will, or should, go down in history as the time when the merging of analogue and digital technology became a reality and not the myth it has proven to be in the past. ■ Happy Scanning o f your micro­ film, Laurie Varendorff, ARMA.

FEATURE

12

Reliable Communications The leaflets that slip out of the envelope containing our bills and statements have traditionally been largely un­ targeted, carpet bombings of inconsequential information, that end up just there, discarded, on the carpet. Not surprisingly response rates have been very low making this kind of insertion an unprofitable practice. The unglamorous and “free” perception marketers have of the channel, added to very low response rates have additionally decreased its popularity.

The ferocity of competition with companies increasing and extending their offerings has, however, brought about a shift in focus highlighting once again the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) potential of the humble bill or statement.

Latest research by Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software supports this come-back indicating that bills and statements are an important point of convergence of the custom ers’ attention. Bank statements are without doubt the most compelling documents as they hold the customer’s attention for an average of 5 minutes and 59 seconds, while the results for direct mail across Europe and the US average at 2 minutes and 58 seconds that’s a whole three minutes less attention paid between these forms of communication.

It thus seems foolhardy to ignore the role of the bill or statement as a key form of marketing communication.

The emergence of a new trend, moreover, is set to propel marketing take-up in the billing and statement arena.

‘Transpromo’ marketing, the practice of using marketing and promotional messages on bills and statements or other transactional documents, is everywhere on the rise. The sender is already duty-bound to despatch transactional communications, so leveraging the compelling power of regular communication with the customer makes perfect sense.

Cross-selling and up-selling can thus effectively be carried

COMMUNICATIONS

Andrew Greenyer, VP International Marketing for Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software, has worked for Pinpoint Analysis, advising clients on how to segment, target and reach their respective customers; for ICD as client services manager; and as head of Analytical Services Division for The Database Group.

out at a negligible cost.

The ability to link customer data industry compliance standards with content creation is crucial, are included on customer The Challenge therefore, in producing messages communications is becoming The key to successful that are truly targeted at the inextricably linked with transpromo marketing on bills individual. As communications document integrity. and statements is making the become individualised, the The significance of good communication relevant to the challenge for organisations will document integrity practice customer. After all, providing an come in ensuring the document cannot be underestimated offer of discounted online integrity of every single when it comes to customer ordering would be hardly worth communication before it is service. In the event that a while for someone who does printed. customer calls the contact not have ready access to the The Importance of Document centre in response to a internet. Apart from being a communication which they Integrity wasted opportunity, providing have been sent, the customer relevant messages can have a Documents feature in our service representative (CSR) direct impact on profits. everyday business communi­ will need to have an exact cations with customers. As the According to research from replica of that document to importance of effective InfoTrends, better use of hand to resolve the query communication is growing, personalised printing can rapidly and satisfactorily. documents play a major part. A increase: overall revenue by custom er’s first impression Moreover, if a mistake has been 23.4%, repeat orders by should be one of quality; the made on the document, they 21.7%, order size by 20.7% way a company is perceived by will also be able to see it and and response rates by 20.5%. others can be influenced by the perhaps issue a replacement It is here that data driven quality of the communication, immediately. marketing techniques come especially if it results in into their own so that each misaddressed mail, incorrect As affinity marketing is taken communication is personalised invoices or irrelevant offers. up, for companies hosting the messages on their communi­ and relevant for the individual.

Certifying document integrity is cations, document integrity Factors which make statements important in delivering best becomes an imperative for communications relevant could include the practice providing quality service to their management. following:affinity partner. Knowing that On a more practical note, major the correct offer is going to the ★ content that relates to the vertical industries have to individual it was designed for customer’s needs include statutory notices on will certainly increase the chances ★ based on their preferences customer documentation. A of a successful partnership.' ★ recognises the extent of the prime example is the banking Moreover, implementing automated sector where stock broking relationship between document handling solutions services communications must organisation and individual may work towards attracting be accompanied by a ★ highlight local resources affinity partners. fluctuating share-price warning ★ accuracy of information message. With new guidelines Our document processes are ★ correct name and address consistently being issued by impacted by change and it is ★ timeliness of offers. regulatory bodies, ensuring rare to find static documents in Visit the GSM Directory at www.greensheetmedia.com/directory

13

E n h a n c e /A p p e n d /U p d a te LutM il At;pwj>

Fig. 1 Data Quality Cycle

the business environment. New data elements in a data feed, rtew content on the document, different types of business rules, compliance guidelines, new version of composition platform and changing reporting needs, all contribute to the dynamic nature of customer messaging.

campaigns to customers in a batch fashion, some organi­ sations have leveraged their database marketing systems to target offers at customers only when they behave in a particular way.

to the same day, depending on time-sensitivity and marketing medium used.

The most effective campaigns therefore will make use of the relationships and recent behaviour to provide highly These ‘event triggers’ - which relevant and compelling offers. might be a customer service The ever changing nature of call or a type of transaction - documents therefore means In addition, marketers are instruct the database marketing that document integrity has increasingly adopting event system to send a targeted offer never been more important. triggered marketing. Rather to the customer in question From compliance, brand than simply process regular anywhere from the same week

perception and right time messaging, ensuring document integrity is becoming a business critical practice.

Guaranteeing that the right message is going to the right customer is vital as event triggered marketing practices become the norm. The shift in power to the consumer means that if document processes go wrong, the potential for mistakes to become very public is high.

Ensuring that automated document handling practices are an integral part of each organisation’s customer communication management strategy therefore is vital.

To learn more about the importance of document integrity and how to implement best-practice visit www.gl.com or call +44 (0)1923 279100.

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Introduction To research this article, I began by firing up google.co.uk and searching (within quotes) for "Healthcare Software". As I know a little about the healthcare industry on both sides of the Atlantic, the fact there were plenty of results was not a complete surprise to me. What did surprise me was that I got 33,600 results. (By comparison, the same search with Google set to search 'the web', came up with 200,000 results. Initially I assumed that Google gives up the ghost after 200,000 results are re­ trieved, thus expecting you to narrow the search, but further searches, ("NHS USA" for example,) came up with over 506,000 results!)

Obviously it would take a tad more time than GSM can allow, for me to follow all the UK links. What I have presented here as the first of a multi-part art­ icle on healthcare software, is an overview of how and why the NHS (National Health Service), and the healthcare private sector in the UK, are evaluat­ ing, procuring and using the software available. I will also perform the same exercise on the USA mar­ ket, and at the same time try to understand why, al­ though the basic principles of healthcare are identic­ al, the UK and USA markets differ so widely in polit­ ics, administration and funding.

The NHS (National Health Service) On the 5th of July 1948 the Brit­ ish NHS was formed. For UK citizens, this was a significant milestone in medical care, with a long-lasting effect as consid­ erable as the other events that took place in the same year.

(The invention of the transistor, the nationalisation of British rail­ ways and electricity generation, and the start of the Berlin Air Lift.)

The rationale behind the forma­ tion of the NHS was not to bring in more doctors, nurses or other specialist staff. In fact on the day the NHS opened for business as it were, the in­ crease in staff was nil, but the benefits to the UK public were many-fold and long lasting.

Over the years since its incep-

tion, the UK NHS has become the envy of the world, one of the biggest political footballs ever in British Polit­ ics, and the topic of many a debate amongst the Brit­ ish Public.

By nationalising over 2,500 voluntary and municipal hospitals, the whole landscape of paying for medical care was altered. Instead of paying for medical atten­ tion as and when required, payments were made by everyone through their taxes.

The benefit to the public was that they could effectively 'pay up' their hospital bills, and if they became seri­ ously ill and required long term care for (say) terminal illness, they only had personal bills to worry them and not the additional high cost of medicine and treatment.

From the NHS perspective, they received funding via government. This money was raised from citizens taxes regardless of whether they required medical treatment or not. The high cost of treatment for one person, being balanced by the 'no cost' of treatment for his neighbour. To me, the balance of rising costs such as that of administration, hospital buildings, staff and equipment, must surely have been countered by the need for less treatment as we cleaned up the UK and everyone started to become healthier. (Ignoring the fact that as a society, we smoke, drink and abuse ourselves more, live longer, and take longer to die when we eventually do need treatment. An interesting conundrum.

There has been a constant battle for funding, which affects the pur­ chasing prowess of any govern­ ment department. More recently, hospitals in the UK were allowed to become more responsible for their own funding by becoming NHS Trusts. This gave them more financial freedom and flexibility to buy in services, equipment and re­ sources, as if the unit were a busi­ ness in its own right.

"Teach us to live that we may dread Unnecessary time in bed.

Get people up and we may save Our patients from an early grave. ” Dr. Richard Asher

(Dr. Asher, was a physician at the Central Middlesex Hospital. He named Munchausen’s Syndrome, and was among the earliest to identify the dangers of institutionalisation and going to bed.)

Source: www.nhshistory.net

Electronic Filing With any technology initiative, there needs to be a clear and co­ herent path to implementation and success. Not only with the availability of systems, particu­ larly IT systems, but some form of basic rule-set on which procure­ ment of any system is based.

Only in this way can information

the hospital can ask me questions, but not if I am traumatised or unconcious!"

interchange take place, and systems created to per­ form to at least a minimum standard. There is al­ ways the chance the hospital may revert to direct government funding by revoking its NHS Trust status too. In which case compatibility is a must.

Freedom of Choice As far as the storage and retrieval of patient records are concerned, the trusts and other hospitals have a relatively free hand in choosing a solution. The funding available for IT within the UK NHS is (cur­ rently) considerable, but this has not always been the case. Many older PAS (Patient Administration Systems) come from a mainframe background, with inherent problems of data access and system com­ patibility. Out of date database technology, poor quality text only VDU's, and a not so intuitive user interface all add to the problems.

Modern day PAS's are normally presented in a user friendly [? Ed.] Windows environment. This allows access to images, native documents, and can even include x-rays. Additional software can allow integ­ ration with other systems such as appointments or specialist clinical databases.

The concern with any healthcare system, is always going to be that a doctor in London, uses a totally different system to do the same job of patient file storage and retrieval, as a doctor in Bradford. The underlying hospital systems may well be the same, and possibly with inter-connected basic information, but at departmental level - things are different!

The main thrust for funding in the UK has been ease of use, immediacy of information retrieval, and secure long term storage of data. Paediatric inform­ ation for example, follows different rules to adult in­ formation. Paediatric info is 'for life', so there is a complete patient history, while an adult coming in to the NHS for treatment for the first time, will not ne­ cessarily have the records retained 'for life’.

The capture of information from hard copy to elec­ tronic form is a key issue for the implementation of any digital information system. Questions often asked at the RFI stage centre on the integrity of the digital file. Is it complete? Is it secure? Is it up to date? (In the UK, the patient can request to see their medical record information, and (generally) only the medical staff and a few other 'official bod­ ies' may have access to patient information.)

Symptoms There are several problems with conventional hard

copy patient records. Physical access comes first.

Often records are held in a separate building to the hos­ pital, and only accessible to certain staff. This means waiting for file access (unless the patient has an ap­ pointment). That of course is providing the file is in the correct position within the system to start with.

Once retrieved, there is then the issue of physical hand­ ling of the file. Seriously ill or long term patients may have a file over a foot in depth. The front cover of a pa­ tient file normally has key information on it, so that is extremely important. When out of the filing system, the file is then the responsibility of the medical staff. There is always the danger of the file becoming split, mis­ placed, put out of order, or of key file elements being lost (such as notes, x-rays and other items).

Digital filing effectively eliminates most of the above vagaries in one stroke. Providing certain rules are fol­ lowed concerning storage, indexing and retrieval meth­ odology, there should never be a case where the file is misfiled, lost, damaged, or dangerously: duplicated!

The next problem is updates. A hospital file such as my own one for example, has not been required for nearly 50 years. As a child, a minor accident triggered a hos­ pital visit at which time the file was started. Since then it has lain dormant on a shelf, but originating as paedi­ atric data, remains 'current'.

Theoretically, if a visit to hospital were required now, the file would simply be retrieved (manually or electron­ ically) and updated with details of the new visit. In the­ ory, this is an easy task, in practice, not so. There are two main problems. Firstly, I no longer live in an area under the auspices of my original health authority. Se­ condly, my family doctor visits (may) have made the hospital file out of date, so the clinician would be work­ ing with old data. Yes, the hospital can ask me ques­ tions, but not if I am traumatised or unconscious. Aller­ gies, physical conditions and many other factors can af­ fect a medical decision.

An electronic system should be capable of finding a remedy for these problems. In the UK, family doctor funding comes from the government and is based on patient numbers. GP's are very cagey about sharing their files with others, not solely on the grounds of doctor/patient confidentiality as you would expect, but mainly because they do not want to lose 'control' over files that leverage funding for their practice.

In Issue 50 ... we continue by taking a look at the USA market, and some common criteria for healthcare soft­ ware. Meantime overleaf, we look at a case study and comment from two healthcare software vendors. ■

O i

O C

C

O

S * A T

Industry comment From Hyland Software I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

Fundamentals Healthcare systems are a core part of Europe’s social infrastructure and maintaining patient care and standards is a number one priority for governments across Europe.

The European Commission is keen to continuously improve healthcare standards on a pan-European level through initiatives such as e-Health. For the past two decades, the European Commission has been supporting research activities and initiatives around IT improvements within the health service and has actively promoted the move towards e-Health.

(The electronic recording and sharing of medical data within the healthcare industry.)

The initiative is placing Europe in a leading position in the use of regional health networks, electronic health records in primary care and the deployment of health cards and electronic document records management systems (EDRMS) are beginning to play a key role.

E-Health has been recognised as a key factor in better coping with some of the current challenges facing the healthcare industry such as manual and labour I intensive records management or ■ difficulties in sharing valuable research information between various healthcare organisations.

As such, governments across Europe have actively been supporting e-Health plans and according to the European Commission’s e-Health ERA report entitled Towards the Establishment of a European e-Health Research Area’, activities to develop and implement national e-Health strategies are being progressed across Europe. The primary aim of the e-Health initiative is to establish more integrated healthcare provision and a more centralised approach to sharing content across the various healthcare departments and hospital facilities. Whilst much progress has been made towards this goal, one of the biggest challenges that still lies ahead for many is the integration of IT systems and the breaking down of information

silos.

Sharing the information The integration of multiple healthcare systems is key to the success of e-Health as it ensures that patients’ medical records are available across the different healthcare organisations, allowing them to share vital medical information and patient records in a more efficient manner. This move will enable individual healthcare providers to offer more standardised levels of patient safety, continuity of care, healthcare quality and confidentiality. Although many healthcare organisations still need to review their systems in order to make this a reality, some organisations are already making progress.

One of the healthcare organisations that has pioneered the sharing of medical records in its own country is Denmark’s Odense University Hospital (OUH). With its 7,500 staff members and more than 1,000 beds, it annually treats 350,000 inpatients, making it the largest hospital in Denmark. In the past, the Hospital faced a range of document management challenges: the storage of medical records occupied large amounts of physical space, document retrieval times were long and converting documents from various formats into one system was time-consuming. In order to address these challenges, OUH implemented an electronic document records management system which greatly reduced costly paper storage and made health records available instantly and securely via the Internet to other research personnel and medical staff from various organisations. Through the web-based system, Odense Hospital now allows authorised and authenticated users to view documents of any file format securely and instantly from any location.

UK Success In the UK, the Sheffield Care Trust (SCT) began looking for a way to better manage and improve access to the abundance of patient medical records and enhance the

quality of its document imaging. Similarly to Odense University Hospital, SCT has improved patient care and safety by making millions of medical records more readily available to clinicians and caregivers by cost-effectively integrating electronic document records management with its existing patient administration system. The electronic document records management system also provides a foundation for ongoing process improvements in other hospital departments such as administration and recruitment.

UK NHS As part of the e-Health initiative, the NHS National Programme for IT (NpfIT) in the UK is already working towards the creation of an NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) to improve the sharing of consenting patients' records across the whole of the NHS and also to provide patient access to their own health records. By taking these steps towards capturing medical records electronically, the NHS has created a framework not only for the various healthcare providers to share information through electronic document records management systems on a national level but also to allow different hospital departments to access centralised data efficiently.

In General It is recognised at all levels that the obvious benefits of initiatives such as eHealth are dependent on the implementation of secure, robust and reliable technologies to support the new processes and requirements. Integrated electronic document records management is not a process that can be implemented overnight but case studies such as the Odense University Hospital and the Sheffield Care Trust show that once the investment in such projects has been made, the potential benefits are great. ■ Hyland Software can be contacted at: www.onbase.com

I I I I I I I I I I I I I

I I I I I I 1 | I 1 ’.

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A Case Study using windream From CC Data's portfolio The Document Management Challenge The Nuffield Hospital in Glasgow, Scot­ land, along with all other healthcare providers, needs to retain secure and readily accessible patient records.

Having tried a number of options, the hospital finally arrived at an innovative solution based on windream, the document management software solution which ‘looks like Windows’.

The Need for Readily Available Patient Records For patients currently undergoing treatment, records are live, they are regularly referred to, and updated with the results of tests and observations.

When a patient leaves the hospital, whether after outpatient treatment of a spell as an inpatient, the records are stored on the premises until next required. When the patient is due to return, the records need to be readily available for the clinicians to refer to and to update.

Traditionally, the paper files would be checked out of the patient records department and sent back to the

outpatients’ clinic or ward as necessary.

One of the features of Nuffield’s patient care is that appointments can be made at short notice. This requires a delivery system which can extract and transfer large numbers of patient records quickly.

Historically, Nuffield stored all patient records in paper files, migrating them to ‘archive’ storage when a course of treatment was completed. More recently, they have used the services of a scanning bureau to convert and index the files, returning them on CD for subsequent referral. This latter option has proved expensive, inconvenient, and Nuffield were concerned longer term about the proprietary nature of the system used for this delivery.

The Search The Nuffield decided that they wanted an electronic file storage system which they would host themselves. A requirements specification was prepared which also included the need to be extendible.

(Particularly to cover documents in the finance department.) Alexis Seenan, the hospitals Deputy Finance Manager,

conducted a market survey to find the solution which best met their needs.

The Solution After preparing a short-list and in association with ADS, a Glasgow-based software reseller, they chose a solution based on windream, which met their needs completely.

The reasons for this decision were: • windream is easy to learn (it appears to users as if it were a part of the operating system) • Files appear in a folder structure that looks like a mapped drive The system has now been further enhanced by the addition of the windream connector for eCopy ShareScan® enabling documents to be directly scanned and indexed into windream from the hospital’s existing multi-function scanning devices. ■ CC Data can be contacted at: www.ccdata.co.uk

Healthcare Feature - Get Involved With so much going on in the sector, Green Sheet intends running the healthcare feature over several issues. After that there will be a regular section in the magazine totally dedicated to healthcare software and systems.

If you work for, or represent a company involved in the healthcare software industry, we are interested in receiving press releases, case studies, opinion pieces or other informa­ tion in the sector.

We may also consider software submissions for review and/or a test report.

Please send any submissions or queries to: healthcarefeatures@areensheetmedia.com

18

European edition network scanner from Fujitsu Designed to support business collaboration, increase document security and reduce corporate communication expenses Fujitsu Europe Limited has introduced its new European edition fi-6000NS network scanner to support individual local language layouts. The fi6000NS multi-language edition colour duplex network scanner comes with a 5-language-panel layout - English, French, German, Italian and Spanish and combines the intuitive, easy installation of a desktop scanner with the productivity of a network scanner for sharing documents in today’s m ulti­ location, global business environment.

“The fi-6000NS network Easy to use, easy to install, scanner supports the complete secure! cycle of an ad hoc capture and The Fujitsu fi-6000NS is the share process” said Klaus quickest, easiest way for an Schulz, Manager, Fujitsu organisation to scan and share Product Marketing EMEA. “This documents.

In the past, device makes it easy for today’s businesses needed centralised information worker to capture, printers, copiers, faxes and distribute and share information. storage disks to enable others It actually integrates ‘naturally’ in the organisation to share into the professional workflow documents and collaborate on routines in modern business projects. With the new fienvironments.”

A

TH E D A T A IM A G IN G & ARCHIVING C O M P A N Y LIMITED - professional d a ta m anagem ent

WANTED UK based Scanning Bureaux

r

The Data Imaging & Archiving Company Ltd. is seeking to purchase UK based scanning bureaux to facilitate its expansion plans.

6 0 0 0 NS , netw ork document sharing, em ailing, faxing and printing becomes much easier.

Simply load documents into the automatic document feeder (ADF), log into the system, type in the destination using the built-in keyboard, and press the scan icon on the large touch­ screen display. The documents will be easily accessible and immediately available to the rest of the organisation within seconds as the scanner distributes documents directly to a network folder, email account, printer or fax machine.

Moreover, the fi-6000NS creates secure, searchable PDF files, allowing users to password-protect their scanned documents, to ensure that files can only be opened by intended recipients.

The fi-6000NS is easy to install.

Simply plug-in the power and Ethernet cable, point the network scanner to your network and email server and it’s ready to operate. Because the scanner uses the existing mail system address book and network security, no user profiles have to be created and maintained. There is also no need for a network adapter, PC or additional software.

Innovative features

f

Ideally located in the South of England, with turnovers between £50K and £500K, although all opportunities will be considered.

In the first instance please co n ta ct Chris N icholls by phone on 0208 542 5151, by e-m ail at chris@ im agingandarchiving.co.uk or by p ost to: Data Im aging & Archiving, 424 K ingston Road, Raynes Park, London SW 20 8LL

PRODUCT NEWS

The Fujitsu fi-6000NS comes equipped with one of the largest touch-screen displays in its class - 8.4 inch XGA (1024 x 768 pixel) TFT colour monitor including 24 bit colour, and zoom/rotate image functionality.

The built-in keyboard makes entering information easy and flips up for access to the document exit tray. For purpose of localising the fi-6000NS, several languages can be selected by the administrator upon the first installation. To

match the chosen operating system language, the scanner provides matching keyboard cover sheets. The fi-6000NS scans in colour, grayscale and monochrome at duplex speeds up to 25 ppm / 50 ipm, offers true 600 dpi optical resolution, a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF), and dual-CCD scanning arrays to consistently capture fine details in colour and monochrome.

The fi-6000NS network scanner also boasts ultrasonic double­ feed detection, long document scanning support (up to 863 mm), and hard card scanning capabilities (ISO7810 standard) as well as embossed card scanning through the standard ADF. With a compact footprint of only 315 x 390 x 275 mm, the fi-6000NS fits easily into the most crowded environments, including front office and back office locations.

Additional highlights and functions include: ★

Scan-to-email, scan-toprint, network folder, network fax systems, and searchable PDF ★ Automatic image quality per de-skew, paper size detection and blank page detection/removal ★

Perfect for medical offices, real estate offices, legal, university administration, warehouses, government or any business looking for easy document sharing

★

Perfect for integrating into leading Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems as “Scan-to-ECMsystem” function. ISVs can be supported with a software development kit (SDK), when integrating the fi-6000NS into their solution.

Pricing and availability The Fujitsu fi-6000NS multi­ language version is now available for a recommended retail price of € 3.000 plus VAT. Further information about Fujitsu and its products is available in the Internet at http://emea.fujitsu. com/felg

Visit the GSM Directory at www.greensheetmedia.com/directory

19

BPO for achieving efficiency, cost savings and compliance With organisations constantly seeking new ways to increase efficiency, cut costs and achieve regulatory compliance, Graphic Data has the answer.

We provide enterprises with efficient and highly cost-effective Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services that enable them to achieve their business goals.

Our services include:

• • • • •

T r ie d an d tr u s te d Some of the world's leading financial institutions rely on Graphic Data's services.

Each year we convert over 50 million documents from paper to electronic formats, process over 5 million credit card applications, manage 25 million live records and we currently store around 3 billion documents.

To find out more about how our extensive BPO services can benefit your organisation, call us on 0845 301 3701, email info@graphicdata.co.uk or visit our website www.graphicdata.co.uk

Digital mailroom Scanning and capture Archiving and storage Records m anagem ent Live file m anagement

graphic c L.uoe

Isn’t it time you found out about

OIT UK’s Total Solution for Content Management?

The C-Cube solutions from OITUK, based on the award-winning software from Optical Image Technology Inc., have been installed in the UK since 1995.

We have provided many solutions ranging from small departmental systems to enterprise-wide systems with full electronic document management (EDM) and workflow. The C-Cube solutions are installed across several industry sectors including finance, local government and health.

OITUK provides:

Aii. Migration to web-based and portal based business ^V. Improvement and enhancement to current business streams Ak. Scalability to address corporate/enterprise information needs Ak

Electronic Forms Processing

ALV Compliance with legislation

The product suite to meet a ll aspects o f E nterprise with: Aii.

Assured service levels

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Operational efficiency

Ab.

Our implementation approach is to develop close partnerships with customers to design, install and support integrated EDM and workflow. Cost­ saving and revenue-enhancing technologies make information more manageable, people more productive and organisations more successful.

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O IT U K

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Member of the Genus Group

Visit the GSM Directory at www.greensheetmedia.com/directory

Hammond Close • Nuneaton • Warwickshire • CV11 6RY • U.K. Telephone (024) 7625 4940 • Facsimile (024) 7638 2319 E-mail sales@oituk.com • Web-Site www.oituk.com

HEALTHCARE

20

GSM Scanner Guide

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Visit the GSM Directory at www.greensheetmedia.com/directory

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GSM SCANNER GUIDE

GSM test report Before we launch into the first GSM Test Report (overleaf) here is a preview of what to expect, Introduction Welcome to the first ever Green Sheet Test Report which begins over the page. We hope to set a precedent with this feature, and will attempt to bring you at least one test report per issue of the magazine. Test reports will be performed on hardware and software, and in addition to the printed test report, additional information will be provided on the GSM web site*. The online part of the test report will include any relevant images of the test equipment which we did not have room for in the magazine, as well as actual test images for scanner comparison. (If you are familiar with the JD Power automotive site and / or the UK's Top Gear television program, you will already have a feel for what we hope to achieve with the Green Sheet Test Report.) * There is a two month 'hold-back' on free access to published test report data which is held online. The online version o f the test report is available to subscribers only during the period the current magazine issue is in circulation. Only after that time will the online version o f the test report be available to all.

The Green Sheet Benchmark Each time we test hardware, we will use the same documents or image files, and attempt the same output result. (TIFF, JPEG, PDF etc.) This allows a direct comparison between different hardware, as it is tested using standard methods. If for example GSM were to test a hard drive, the benchmark would be to measure the speed of transfer of a standard file size under local and then network conditions. Printers will have the same image sent to them each time, again over local and network conditions. This will provide metrics for print speed, file handling and overall quality.

From these test reports we can start to build GSM comparison charts which are like-for-like. This method means that we do not need to rely on what the manufacturer or distributor tells us about throughput and other specifications. This methodology has worked well in the photographic trade for decades, and there is no reason why it will not work for information management equipment.

If a unique function is added to a scanner and it is deemed by GSM to become a regular feature for that type of equipment, (a dynamic threshold setting for example) then that function will be added to the list as a 'check' item, and tested accordingly in a standard manner. In addition, newly tested equipment will be marked as 'tested' in the scanner comparison chart which will feature regularly in the magazine.

A4 Test Chart In future GSM will use a standard A4 resolution chart.

Originally developed as a test target for the photographic trade, this allows us to test the overall quality of a scanner, and tell us if there is any sensor misalignment or unevenness in document transport. (An excellent source

Postcards Normally more troublesome than (say) an A4 sheet of card, the fact that some types of card are too small to be fed correctly can decide which jobs you accept and which you refuse for your hardware. Standard postcards are used for the test, which incorporate line drawings, mono and colour offset litho printing as well as, photographic postcards.

(The latter being actual photographic prints produced as postcards.) The colour gold is also tested as a colour benchmark as it is difficult to get the hues 100% correct both in scanning and printing.

Paper (Single Sided) No printer or scanner can be tested without passing standard paper through! Of course with production scanners the main emphasis is how many sheets can be loaded onto the hopper, and how fast does the scanner scan them. (Without mis-feeds, skewing etc.) Hopefully this will give a realistic representation of working speeds. (As opposed to the manufacturers quoted speed for pristine documents.)

Paper (Double Sided) Advances in modern equipment production techniques, mean that more and more often scanners are now able to handle double sided originals in a single pass (Duplex) as standard.

Some printers can print double sided too, although given that they are more often than not larger office production printers, they are likely be outside our test report scope at GSM.

of test targets can be found at our industry colleagues web site at www.a-p-international.com.)

Magazine Another standard test will be to scan an entire copy of Issue 49.

This is for a variety of reasons, but mainly for consistency. If we use the same originals each time, then you can compare individual pages for quality. This also allows us to give you a stand­ ard document scan or print throughput speed at a certain dpi.

A4 (11.75” x 8.25") Card Thick card travels well through (most) printers and scanners, particularly those with a 'straightthrough' paper path and with a robust transport mechanism.

Machines which force a 'bend' on media being scanned or printed are generally more prone to misfeeds, so we will test beyond the norm but not make

OCR Wherever possible we will use an OCR facility. There are different algoritm methods used by software engineers for OCR, and where possible we will try to let you know which method was employed. Some OCR engines use a single pass method, but employ an extremely complicated algorithm, others

If there is something in particular you would like to see in our test reports, or if you have hardware or software you would like us to test, please email us at: testreports@greensheetmedia.com What We Will Test Against The standard items we will scan or print as a part of the benchmark are as follows:

too much of a situation if media jams or skews. (This is how engineers design things. Find the tolerance limit, then exceed it many times for extra safety.)

Visit the GSM Directory at www.greensheetmedia.com/directory

use a double-pass system where the same algorithm is used twice. Then there is a 'polling' method, where three or more algorithms are used and the results 'checked' by the software. The character used is the one where the most votes have gone to, for what is deemed to be the 'correct' char­ acter. (Is a '5 a '5, or is it an upper-case 'S' character?) This 'polling' method is how the space shuttle and flight fly-by­ wire computers decide what to do if they disagree.

(GSM have an article on OCR in preparation for a future issue of the magazine.)

PDF The quality of a PDF and its con­ tents can vary considerably. The PDF's we send to our printer to produce the magazine for ex­ ample, are set up as 300dpi as standard. If we tried to send that file to our 'PDF Only1 subscribers, it would take 3 weeks and a T1 internet link to download the email with the file attached. For consistency we will (where scanner or other software being tested allows us to,) test PDF creation functionality and speed using 300dpi scanned pages. This should give a fair idea of what to expect in terms of scanner speed, conversion speed, quality etc.

Other Media From time to time we may be able to scan other media such as photographic film. To do this we will use standard media each time so again there is a direct comparison between equipment makes and types. For microfilm scanning (or writing) equipment we will do the same. GSM ■

The GSM Rating Explanation An overall % system with detailed analysis allows GSM to show in detail how a test item has fared.

Marking will consist of: • Installation • Configuration • Functionality • Ease of Use • Documentation From each of these comes a % mark. When totalled this equals the overall % figure.

As an example, the result will be shown as: Overall 80% : GSM Rating 8/10

GSM TEST REPORT

GSM Test Report: 001

Canon DR-2510C Scanner OVERVIEW The Canon DR-2510C is light in weight, and a well made twotone unit with a relatively small footprint. Easy to set up, and with the software also easy to install, it is fairly quiet in operation and surprisingly fast.

The supplied software was comprehensive and provided most functions you would ever need on a desktop / front-office / occasional scanner. Options for file output were also very comprehensive.

BASIC SPEC (from manufacturers own data) Equipment Type: Desktop type sheet fed scanner Optical Resolution: 600 dpi Scanning Speeds: B&W/Grayscale 200/300dpi - 25ppm (simplex) 200/300dpi - 50ipm (duplex) Colour 200dpi - 25ppm (simplex) 200dpi - 50ipm (duplex) 300dpi - 15ppm (simplex) 300dpi - 30ipm (duplex) Max. Document Sizes: W idth-50-216mm Length - 53.9-356mm Feeder Capacity: 50 sheets (80gsm) Output Resolution (dpi): 100, 150, 200, 240, 300,400, 600 Interface: High Speed USB 2.0 Dimensions (mm): Tray closed 298(W) 160(D) 160(H) Tray opened 298(W) 490(D) 245(H) Weight: Approx. 2.4kg Daily Duty Cycle: Approx.

1,500 scans/ day Bundled Software: ISIS/TW AIN Drivers (for Win 2000, XP, XP Pro, Vista) Capture Perfect 3.0 Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard Scansoft Paperport SE Nuance Omnipage SE

DEPTH Setting Up The hardware has to be prepared but not switched on at this stage. Extremely easy to do, this presented no prob­ lems, and with both a Quick Start Guide and a full manual available on hard copy and on disk, there should be no excuse for not getting the unit to work first time.

Software Installation [Ed’s note: At this point I have to hang my head in shame and say Windows XP Pro SPII failed to recognise the hardware once the software was installed. This puzzled me for a while, and in attempting to diagnose the problem I removed all other USB cables from the PC (5 in all) and tried connecting the scanner to each port in turn, i then tried an externally powered USB hub and Windows still would not recognise the unit.

Calling Mr Gate s all of the devils under the sun, I then twigged that I should really have swapped out the USB cable as a first port o f call. I broke out the Canon supplied cable, tossing aside my own and it worked the first time it was powered up! (And yes before you ask the question it was in fact powered up when I initially attemped to connect it.)]

Canon's Capture Perfect 3.0 software operates with both ISIS and TWAIN drivers.

Additional software is supplied

Postcards Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper

Col/B&W Colour 256 Grey 256 Grey 256 Grey Colour Colour Colour B&W B&W B&W

with the scanner (but due to editorial constraints was not installed for this test report and as it transpired, the basic software was more than ad­ equate for the operation of the unit.) The supplied software comprises: Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard (in 6 languages!), and a CD of bundled application software which consisted of Omni Page SE 4 (for OCR), Presto! BizCard Reader 5 SE (business card scanning and management) and PaperPort 11 SE (file management). The Canon software is easy to install with standard and custom install options

available.

Once the USB problem was resolved, XP Pro recognised the device, without a problem, and on starting the software, a quick test scan resulted in a perfect image first time. Well done Canon for not only giving us decent scan software, but also for configuring it in such a way that there is a sporting chance of obtaining a good result when switching the scanner

Size 6” x 4” A4 A4 A4 A4 A4 A4 A4 A4 A4

Mode Items dpi 600 Singlex 5 Duplex 3 100 3 300 Duplex 600 Duplex 3 Duplex 3 100 Duplex 300 3 Duplex 3 600 3 100 Duplex 300 Duplex 3 Duplex 3 600

on and firing off a test.

Getting Started A read through the manual established that the scanner and software were versatile, and that in combination would provide good all round service for most front office/workgroup situations. Although not a high volume production scanner, it is fast enough (and quiet enough) to be situated in an open office and provide fairly high throughput if re­ quired.

Software Functionality So often in the past, GSM has found that great scanning products are sometimes sup­ plied with totally abysmal scanning software. It used to be the case that software was tagged on as an 'after­ thought' with the techies having done a great job on the hardware, with all the knobs and twiddly bits in place that you might (but probably do not) need.

Thankfully Canon's Capture Perfect software provided with the scanner is clear, concise, and relatively easy to

Seconds 30 5 6 18 5 16 107 4 5 13

No. Minute* No. Hour* 600 10 36 2160 30 1800 600 10 36 2160 675 11 101 2 2700 45 2160 36 831 14 estimated

and with the ability to scan quickly and efficiently to a variety of file formats, it will be a valuable asset to many offices.” use. Within a few clicks you can set up the scanner to capture a basic document or even a double sided page, OCR it, scan it to a PDF, set up a job for similar documents next time they occur, and batch scan too.

Several key operations were attempted, and throughout the whole of the test process, none of the settings required change other than the mode (for setting mono, colour etc.) and the dpi.

Even a dark original came out perfectly legible with the default brightness settings in place.

Document size was set to 'automatic' and the unit coped with oversize A4, and small postcards without any difficulty.

The only real criticism which GSM could levy at the software would be in two minor and one major area. The minor areas are the use of the term 'Save' in the dialogue box for setting up a batch scan. It seems a little quirky for the screen in which you set up batch scanning, and as there is a further option within that window to set up the scanner, an inexperienced operator could be forgiven for thinking this is where you save the settings for a batch scan, rather than invoke the process.

The other minor gripe is that Image Info appears under the Help menu option.

More of a concern is the OCR window, which could do with some tidying up. The interface is not greatly intuitive in that the text captured is displayed in a somewhat basic fashion within a grey panel to the left of the image OCR'd. (Of course it is almost impossible for software to format OCR'd text and present it on screen as it appears in the area or document you have scanned.) A more intuitive layout would make it easier to use.

The test document used for OCR was a 4 column page from an issue of Green Sheet. This was saved to the Capture k Perfect standard ,csv file, and ^ k viewed on screen using ^ ^ k O p e n Office Calc. (The ^ o p e n source alternative |^ ^ to Windows Excel.) f ^ ^ O n e of the things the

73 CD > CO

OCR section of the software does not do for the .csv file, is to split the text into its original columns. To do that you need to define an 'area' within the OCR set-up screen and extract the text from inside the so ftware. However it is possible to swipe that text (in the grey box) with the left mouse button, then copy / paste using right-click +Copy or standard Windows keyboard short­ cuts. (In the grey panel it does show the text stream in one continuous column.)

These minor things aside, the OCR function does work well at all resolutions, and no difference was found in charac­ ter recognition at a higher dpi.

The OCR engine did not like our pages green text but with most of the body text recognised on first pass this is not really an issue. If an organisation were serious about OCR at the point of capture the volumes would probably be such that this scanner would be too slow. It is good to have the feature though, as it is so handy to be able to OCR without having to re­ vert to an external process such as printing images to PDF and then performing a Text Select within the Acrobat Reader.

The Unit When not in use, the scanner sits neatly and unobtrusively on the desk. The clam-shell design allows the paper feed hopper and exit tray to be folded away, so not only are they out of the way but also help keep the footprint small. They also double as dust covers and protect the roller and feed areas from objects which might comprom­ ise the scanning optics.

When in use, the steep angle of the feed tray ensures a positive grip by the (single) roller takeup system, and although the

Prices UK: £574.14 + VAT Curope: circa. 790€ U$A: $

exit tray does extend to accommodate A4 documents, it 'cantilevers’ upwards at an angle. If the tray is not cleared and a lot of documents are allowed to accumulate, it does flex deskwards, but appears strong enough to cope.

Two flaps fold out

from the underneath of the exit tray, but quite what they are for is a mystery to GSM. Forcing a document mis-feed was a tricky operation as the take-up mechanism is so effect­ ive. Nobody at GSM wanted to have to return a broken scanner from our first testing, but we did manage a mis-feed by (slightly) forcing several thick sheets of card to scan at once. There is a quick release for the transport system on the face of the scanner, and the mis-feed was corrected in seconds.

(No scanners were harmed in the making of this test report.) The method used for detecting page mis-feeds is apparently ultrasonic. Of course GSM couldn't tell if that was true as it was outside of our hearing range! Seriously though, it de­ tects paper length at the time of feed, and multiple page feeds are deemed too long and the software stops scanning and flags up a warning screen.

Scanning Speed (Please refer to the comparison table on the left page for more detailed information.)

Colour A4: Set to A4 colour

Installation: C onfiguration: Functionality: Ease of Use: D ocum entation:

90% 90% 85% 85% 85%

100dpi duplex the scanner pro­ cessed 3x double sided pages in 6 seconds. At 300dpi it took 14 seconds, and at 600dpi it was 1 minute 48 seconds. (The latter involved more transfer time and disk activity, and the scanner did pause for thought on two occasions. This is probably nothing untoward, as there were other activities going on at the PC end at J the time, and who in their right mind scans A4 in colour at 600dpi as a standard setting in any case?

(Apart from anything else, the file sizes are on average almost 24x larger at 600dpi than they are at 100dpi.)

PDF: A 32 page A4 issue of the Green Sheet was scanned at 300 dpi (colour) This took 1 minute 45 seconds to scan with an additional 30 seconds to complete PDF creation.

Mono: We scanned 3x double sided A4 pages in grayscale at 100, 300 and 600dpi.

Black and White: We created a basic two tone TIFF. Again at 3 dpi settings.

Colour Card: The document size was set to auto-detect, and small colour cards of about 6” x 4”, scanned at 600dpi at the rate of 10x a minute.

Synopsis A great little unit to have handy on the desk. Much faster and more versatile than an all-inone scanner / fax / printer / coffee maker, and with the ability to scan quickly and efficiently to a variety of file formats, it will be a valuable asset to many offices. The Scan To PDF feature is very handy too.

All in all Canon have produced something which looks smart, works well, and does exactly what is should do within its price range. GSM ■

GSM OVERALL RATING

O. 7/ Q

out of

4 f\

1U

Rest of the World

/ I WHERE ARE YOU ALL? The GSM Directory wants to hear from you because...

in the global directory with

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25

PEOPLE.... ....on the Move Growth for Formscan MD Chris Haden builds up Formscan m anagement team with new appointment Formscan Document Solutions, one of the UK’s longest-estab­ lished providers of information management solutions to busi­ ness and government, has announced the appointment of Simon Stammers as Sales Director. The appointment of Stdmmers further strengthens the Formscan management team following Chris Haden’s acquisition of the company last year, and illustrates his commit­ ment to ramping-up the com­ pany’s sales, channel, market­ ing and management creden­ tials.

Stammers brings over 20 years of experience of the document imaging and solutions industry to his new role, with a particu­

Director at Dicom Technologies, where in three years he suc­ cessfully turned the profitability of the company’s channel busi­ ness around.

"We are thrilled to add Simon to our management team," Chris Haden, Formscan’s Managing Director, says. "His impressive knowledge of the industry and his can-do attitude will be a real asset to us. Simon’s addition larly strong track-record in puts Formscan in a great posi­ establishing a cohesive and tion to satisfy the increasing driven sales team supported by demand for outsourced hosted a coordinated marketing and solutions, archive and retrieval PR programme. Before joining services, along with com pli­ Formscan he grew the New ance, and disaster recovery Business Pipeline threefold as solutions. Of course, his experi­ Sales Director at Anacomp. ence developing channel part­ Prior to that, he served as Sales ners will be also invaluable as

we work more closely with sys­ tems integrators and outsource service providers."

Mr Stammers comments, "I am very pleased to join Chris’s team, and am keen to play a part in developing the business.

This is an exciting time for Formscan, as Chris continues his efforts to extend the range of services offered by Formscan to the European mar­ ket. I am confident my skills and knowledge in business development, supplier manage­ ment, and the channel will serve Formscan well and I relish the opportunity to be a part of this growing company." ■

2 appointments at Documation Documation has announced Documation’s increasing num­ to working with them in the UK art gallery, Dave feels set­ two new appointments to the bers of mainland European cus­ future. This growth of the sup­ tled in Documation already: “ I Support Team. Dave Manneh tomers, Louis is a native port team reflects Documation’s have been surprised at how and Louis Thebaudeau joined Frenchman, coming to the UK constant push towards achiev­ customer focused everyone is Eastleigh based Documation in from his hometown of Nantes. ing the highest level of cus­ at Documation, it’s a really pos­ January as Support Analysts. Jon Moakes, Assistant Support tomer service and satisfaction.” itive environment to work in.

Both have had similar experi­ Manager at Documation, is From my experience so far, I Dave and Louis will assist the ences with large corporates and pleased with how well the two can see that Documation pro­ support team in providing pro­ with SME’s and come to new starters are fitting in: “ I am vides an incredibly powerful fessional customer service and Documation from previous sup­ delighted that Dave and Louis solution that can automate and support to Documation cus­ port roles with leading IT organ­ have decided to join streamline business processing tomers. Coming from a previ­ isations.

Documation. Already both have as well as offering document ous role working as a Systems been a real asset to the team management functionality.” ■ Reflecting the need to support Support Analyst for a leading and we are all looking forward

New President for Canon Europe Canon Europe has appointed Ryoichi Bamba as its new President and CEO. He was appointed to the new role on 1st February, replacing Hajime Tsuruoka, who has held the position for seven years.

Ryoichi Bamba moves across from Canon USA, where he was Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Imaging Systems Group, over­ seeing marketing for Canon’s for Canon Europe across all office equipment product line. business sectors and markets.

His new role will see him build He takes over an organisation upon his international experi­ that has enjoyed record sales ence to drive continued growth and profit for the region in 2007, Visit the GSM Directory at www.greensheetmedia.com/directory

as the biggest regional contrib­ utor to overall revenues for the Canon Inc. group of compa­ nies.

Ryoichi Bamba has enjoyed a successful career at Canon spanning 36 years, including working together with Hajime Tsuruoka in Tokyo and Europe over many years. He previously worked in Canon Europe in a product marketing role and in Canon Italy as Director and General Manager, responsible for the office equipment busi­ ness. More recently, he has been responsible for record photocopier sales in the US,

instrumental in helping the region to achieve the highest market share of the global Canon group.

Ryoichi Bamba said: “ Canon Europe is a hugely successful pan-European organisation, as evidenced by record financial results for 2007. My role is to build on this success, which includes strengthening ties between Canon Europe, Canon Inc and the other global regions, as part of our com­ pany’s firm commitment to becoming a truly world class organisation. ” ■

PEOPLE

Why we must regain the value of paper?

By Managing Director of Xenos Europe (www.xenos.com), Jeff Mills UK bookshops expected sales homes and, more importantly, to reach three million copies in paper intensive organisations 24 hours for the final instalment are on track to raising the of the Harry Potter series that perception of paper worth: was published in July. Each of the 600-plus page books was The four principles of paper given a retail price of £17.99, and print but in many shops it was half ☆ Reduce what you print price and some even selling it ☆ Re-use what is printed for £5. Whilst it is encouraging to see children so eager to read, A Recycle what is no longer needed my concern is the lack of value that seems to be placed on •A Review and revise your paper today. paper and print requirement ongoing It would be very easy to suggest that in an information rich age of In a typical office 10 percent of email and the Internet there is all documents will be mislaid no longer a need for ink on and, on average, 19 copies are paper, but this simply would not made of any document. be true and I suspect very few It is not enough to place the people (even the most responsibility at the desk of the dedicated Harry Potter fan) employee, asking them to think would sit in front of a screen and twice before printing or re­ read the novel in full. We are printing documents or emails. human and some things we Employee responsibility will prefer to read in print whilst have a positive impact, but to be others we are happy to read on significant it needs to be part of screen. the organisations corporate We are all being actively responsibility and ingrained into encouraged to recycle (we have its business processes. a paper-recycling scheme in our Crucially, the benefits of office and the WEEE (Waste reducing print and paper usage Electrical and Electronic are not only environmental.

Equipment) directive that came Significant financial and into force earlier this year resource gains are to be provides clear guidelines achieved as a direct result. regarding the disposal of old electrical equipment), but an Make an environmental organisation with green statement aspirations should be taking a To give an example of a typical more proactive approach and business process that can thinking about reducing deliver fast results, consider the unnecessary paper wastage life of a single bank statement. way before the recycling stage.

Put simply we need to start Towards the end of the month, a appreciating the value of paper large print file including every customer’s statement details is again. sent to a fulfilment house. Our There are four key principles statement (along with tens of that, once adopted, will ensure

FEATURE

thousands of others) will be printed onto multiple sheets of paper and will then be stuffed into an envelope and posted.

Of course, there is an environ­ mental cost associated, not only with the printed statement and the envelope, but also in the fuel and carbon emissions used to get the statement to our letterbox. We then discard the envelope and choose to either keep or shred and dispose of the statement.

Now, consider how a more forward thinking bank manages this process.

Aware that many customers prefer to bank online this bank gives all of its customers a choice as to how they wish to receive their statement, either online or printed. Whilst the other bank is completing its resource intense and costly fulfilment operation a similar file is created that includes all of the same statement information, yet within a few hours every statement has been created in PDF format, stored securely online and an email sent to each online customer informing them that their statement is ready to be viewed. In the first month of doing this the bank reduces fulfilment and material costs, postal charges and lowers its overall carbon footprint. In addition the customer receives their statement quicker and the perception of service is improved. As more customers chose the online service (perhaps incentivised in some way) the rewards continue to stack up month after month.

With 74.6 million credit and

charge cards (not including current accounts) in the UK each receiving a several page statement per month you can begin to see how this one small change to a business practice can have a huge impact. If every business, large and small, applied the four key principles I mentioned earlier to their most print intensive business processes, there would be an unquestionable reduction in paper volumes.

In order to practice what I preach I have endeavoured to write this article without pressing the print button, and I can tell you it has been a challenge. If you are reading this now and would like to pass it on to a colleague, I would urge you to put a copy of this on their desk, or email it to them.

Who knows when the next big literary phenomenon strikes, perhaps the value of paper will have risen and will see people queuing at the library to loan out a copy. ■

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MARCH March 4-7, Third International Workshop "Dependability Aspects on Data Warehousing and Mining applications" DAWAM 2008 Location: Barcelona, Spain For more information visit: www.ares-conference.eu AIIM EXPO CONFERENCE: March 3-6, 2008 EXPOSITION: March 4-6, 2008 Location: Boston, MA For more information visit: www.aiimexpo.com

May 8-10, BITWorld 2008: Information Resources Management: challenges and opportunities Location: Durban, South Africa For more information visit: www.bit-world.org May 15-17, Thinking Critically: Alternative Perspectives and Methods in Information Studies Location: Milwaukee, Wl For more information visit: www.uwm.edu May 18-20, 2008 International Conference on Information Resources Management (Conf-IRM) Location: Niagara Falls, ON For more information visit: www.sprott.carleton.ca

ON DEMAND CONFERENCE: March 3-6, 2008 EXPOSITION: March 4-6, 2008 Location: Boston, MA For more information visit: www.ondemandexpo.com

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March 9-11, ASIDIC Spring Meeting Location: Las Vegas, NV For more information visit: www.asidic.org

May 18-21, 9th Annual Conference on Digital Government Research Location: Montreal, QC For more information visit: www.dgo2008.org

March 24-29, International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (ICIKM 08) Location: Kathmandu, Nepal For more information visit: www.icikm-2008.com.np

May 20-21, Streaming Media East Location: New York, NY For more information visit: www.streamingmedia.com JUNE

March 25-30, 11th International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT 2008) Location: Nantes, France For more information visit: edbt2008.univ-nantes.fr March 29, International Workshop on Semantics in Data and Knowledge Bases (SDKB) Location: Nantes, France For more information visit: www.is.informatik.uni-kiel.de

June 01-04, ARMA Canada 2008 Regional Conference A River of Information... A Sea of Solutions Location: Fredericton, NB, Canada For more information visit: www.armacanada.org June 2-3, 7th Annual Security Conference Location: Las Vegas, NV For more information visit: www.security-conference.org June 2-4, ISOneWorld 2008 Location: Las Vegas, NV For more information visit: www.isoneworld.org

March 30-April 3, 30th European Conference on Information Retrieval Location: Glasgow, Scotland For more information visit: ecir2008.dcs.gla.ac.uk APRIL April 2-3, Business Continuity Expo Location: Excel, London For more information visit: www.businesscontinuityexpo.co.uk April 7-12, 24th International Conference on Data Engineering Location: Cancun, Mexico For more information visit: www.icde2008.org

June 3-6, Second IEEE International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS â&#x20AC;&#x2122;08) Location: Marrakech, Morocco For more information visit: www.farcampus.com June 5-7, Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) 36th Annual Conference: Information Beyond Borders Location: Vancouver, BC For more information visit: www.cais-acsi.ca June 9-11, 16th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2008) Location: Galway, Ireland For more information visit: www.ecis2008.ie

April 9-12, IADIS International Conference e-Society 2008 Location: Algarve, Portugal For more information visit: www.esociety-conf.org April 10-14, 9th Annual Information Architecture Summit Location: Miami, FL For more information visit: www.iasummit.org

June 12-16, 10th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2008) Location: Barcelona, Spain For more information visit: www.iceis.org

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April 30-May 4, 22nd Annual AIIP Conference Location: Pittsburgh, PA For more information visit: www.aiip.org

June 22-24, 9th Annual Global Information Technology Management Association (GITMA) World Conference Location: Atlanta, GA For more information visit: www.science.kennesaw.edu

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DIARY DATES

June 26-July 2, ALA Annual Conference Location: Anaheim, CA For more information visit: www.ala.org

Visit the GSM Directory at www.greensheetmedia.com/directory

JULY July 7-9, 2nd International Conference on Bioinformatics Research and Development (BIRD ’08) Location: Vienna, Austria For more information visit: www.birdconf.org

GSM CLASSIFIEDS Software windream by CC Data. Clear and Simple Document Management Easy to implement and easy to use. Unique Windows integration.

See our software reviewed in Issue 48, and see our ad on page 2.

AUGUST August 19-20, destinationCRM 2008 Location: New York, NY For more information visit: www.destinationCRM.com SEPTEMBER September 11-12, 2nd European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation (ECIME 2008) Location: London, UK For more information visit: academic-conferences.org September 14-16, ASIDIC Fall Meeting Location: Boston, MA For more information visit: www.asidic.org September 26-28, 1st World Summit on the Knowledge Society Location: Athens, Greece For more information visit: knowledge-summit.org OCTOBER October 11-12, 2nd International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR '07) Location: Corfu, Greece For more information visit: www.mtsr.ionio.gr October 14-17, 2nd International Symposium on Information Interaction in Context (IliX) Location: London, UK For more information visit: irsg.bcs.org October 15 - 16th, Documation Location: Olympia, London For more information visit: www.documation-uk.co.uk October 15 - 16th, Storage Expo Location: Olympia, London For more information visit: www.storage-expo.com

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tale; piece

BEFORE WE GO ON .... This will be my last Tale Piece as Exec. Editor.

Our long standing editor Tim is retiring after this issue and I will be getting promoted to page 3. There I will be taking a much more serious view of our information management industry, and the business world in general.

I would like to thank Tim for all of his help and support, and I wish him a long, healthy and interesting retirement. A good friend of mine will take over Tale Piece with his own inimitable view of the business of IT and IM. Hello Everybody!

It has been a long journey hasn't it? But we are almost there now.

We were on the plane and careering across the skies at breakneck speed. Oh yes - I was talking about in-flight catering last issue. These days, with price being a very important factor for the generai and business traveller, many airlines are now taking the approach (pun intended) that you pay the minimum for the fare, and they charge for in-flight catering.

Personally I have no problem with this at all, particularly on short hop flights. We shouldn't expect free meals on short flights.

Long-haul perhaps.

There is now legislation in the UK that states that an 'all-in' price should be quoted to avoid any confusion over pricing of the journey. This is mainly in relation to the flight + tax cost. Airlines get around it in other ways. The journey itself seems reasonable, but if you want a bag in the hold, it costs extra. If you want to sit next to your family, colleague, lover, etc., it costs extra. If you want food or drink, it costs extra.

I wonder how long it will be before they put a price on going to toilet? The other question has to be this. Can you legitimately claim in-flight expenditure as expenses? I think you should be able to, as you have no choice.

(You can't exactly 'pop out' for a sandwich and coffee can you?)

Going back to the flight we are on at present however, as Billy Connolly said in the excellent Brit Film "Still Crazy", "It's good to know that in an uncertain world, some things never change". He was referring to rock band member in-fighting, I relate that particular phrase to 'The Landing'.

Now call me picky if you like, but the seat-belt sign is there for a reason.

Funnily enough it actually means 'keep your seat belt on'. Why oh why then do I see, (or rather hear), the click of so many air passengers releasing their belts the split nanosecond after the plane has stopped? (And sometimes just as we pull off the main runway!)

TALE PIECE

The pilot has other more important things to do than let you out of your seat at this particular point in time. Semiimportant things such as stopping the port engine rotating so you don't get your head lopped off as you leave the aircraft, or sucked into the jet engine which took you to your destination. Once HE is satisfied as to safety, HE decides when you should unbuckle, not you!

What do I do? Sit motionless that's what! Here's why ....

Countless times I see people rushing to stand, hauling overhead baggage out (usually to the dulcet tones of a Gavin or Mandy who are our cabin crew,) 'Take care' they say, 'It [the

straight and narrow on your way to the terminal building, and rope off the engines. You know I can almost hear these standing people complaining later in the day to family or work colleagues about sore shoulders and necks.

Had they not been standing with their head cocked to one side for 10 minutes, they would have been fine and chiropractic free.

I sit quietly bemused until the cabin is virtually empty, and usually find that by the time I have trekked on foot half way back around the world again to Garbage Reclaim, I (usually, and hopefully) find my bags just appearing. I am lucky enough never to have suffered the old adage on air travel from the

Sunsets around the world make travel worthwhile. A prize if you guess the location.

overhead baggage] may have moved during the flight'.) Now to me that is quirky. If the overhead baggage didn't move - it would still be at our departure airport!

Nevertheless, undeterred by Health & Safety warnings from those who know these things, our not-so-well-meaning fellow passengers still run the risk of clobbering us with their goods and chattels in an effort to get a gold medal for being 'First Off The Aircraft'. What is the point?

Even aircraft with their own steps need time to go through safety checks, switch the doors to manual opening, deploy the steps, make sure ground staff are there to keep you on the

Concorde age: “Breakfast in London, Lunch in New York”, to which some wag added “Luggage in Rio de Janeiro”. So another queue has been avoided. Customs and passport control are next, and here, delays are a fact of life these days. Live with it! There is no point in complaining. That will either get you arrested or at best, further delayed. I do have a very funny story to tell about a personal experience with visas and passports, but I will keep it bottled for now. Suffice to say it involves my sharing a (non­ criminal) cell at Chicago Airport hosted by the very nice people at the (then) INS. (Immigration

and Naturalisation Service) The time was spent in the company of others, but mainly with an extremely literate and very pleasant Asian gentlemen who was on his way back home thanks to his own endeavours.

Apparently the INS were more than a little puzzled as to how he got into the U.S.A in the first place. He had arrived with a perfectly valid Visa, but with a passport which had a picture of someone else on it!

On the point about complaining, if way back at check-in you find someone moaning, groaning, shouting and even swearing at ground staff about the fact the flight is late taking off because of 'technical problems' please do me a favour. SHOOT THEM! I would far rather fly on an airworthy plane and be safe, than fly on a terminal (pun intended again!) journey in an unsafe plane. It is not as if you can pull in to the side of the road and call for assistance is it?

Be safe, travel safe and above all, enjoy the journey.

Sometimes the going really is better than the getting there.

My old friend Crusty is taking over Tale Piece from now on. He used to be the IT director of a large British company, and travelled the world looking after their interests (and many of his own from what I can gather!).

He hopes that his unique experiences will help many of us further ourselves in business and management. He intends to impart some of his hard earned knowledge of projects, systems, management and business politics so we can all benefit. ■ Scoop Baker, Internationally Renowned Travel Reporter FOOTNOTE Many thanks to Tim Nixon for allowing me to be in charge since January 2007. Having run the magazine for so long virtually on his own I appreciate the supreme effort he has made to welcome me and the changes I have initiated over the last 8 issues. (Changes for the better I hope.) Happy Retirement Tim.

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