Category: General News

For those that absolutely must carry out their own scanning, but cannot justify the expense of buying the equipment, we now offer a scanner hire service using super-reliable Kodak production scanners capable of handling even the biggest task.

To ensure enhanced security and availability of scanned documents that are made available to clients through our online document retrieval service, we have embraced cloud storage.

Utilising Amazon Web Service S3 storage system we can now give a SLA that promises that every reasonable commercial effort will be used to make documents available with a Monthly Uptime Percentage of at least 99.9%

Amazon S3 supplies the same highly scalable, reliable, secure and fast infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. Integrated data protection features means that your data is protected from both logical and physical failures, guarding against data loss from unintended user actions, application errors, and infrastructure failures.

For more information about our various scanning services please do not hesitate to contact us.

Target Media been performing backfile scanning (existing active paper medical records) for years. Today, it is often performed in conjunction or in parallel with when a practice is moving to an EMR system such as Docman.

When called in to perform backfile scanning for our NHS clients and we make our recommendations to scan to searchable PDF, as we do in over 90% of the cases, we’re often asked: Why PDF?

The reasons are simple, and we’ve put the top 10 reasons here for your reference:

Viewable with a free download (Adobe Reader) or built in to many operating systems and browsers.

The search results window will display an abstract on the side of each search result allowing the user to quickly find the information required.

Searched keywords allow for quick comparison and trend-spotting.

Offers security to prevent deletion, alteration, misfiling, etc.

Can be marked up without comprising the integrity of the original scan

Can be run side-by-side with any EMR application

Can be used as an alternative to EMR for simple document management, allowing you to append pages to any PDF patient file.

Turns your mounds of paper into meaningful information that can be called up within seconds.

Conversion of paper files is a large, time-consuming task requiring specialized skills and impeccable organization. At Target Media we have developed a comprehensive medical record scanning solution to get you on your way to a paperless, or paperlight, practice. Target Media now offers document OCR at no additional cost, as well as a choice to receive your scanned documents burned to a CD/DVD or on USB stick or hard drive.

Call or email us for a complimentary demo of the benefits of an OCR-searchable medical record on your own computer and from the comfort of your own office!

It used to be that there wasn’t any choice – document scanners only produced black and white images but high end scanners, increased processor speeds and cheaper storage have made full colour scanning a reality. So what are the differences between the two image options?

Image size – A typical A4 sheet scanned in black and white uses about 8k of disk space, the same sheet scanned in full colour will consume about 200k of space. This is because a colour image contains far more information than a black and white image and the latter is fairly easy to compress while a colour image is not. But this apparent disadvantage has disappeared with the advent of much cheaper drives that allow vast amounts of information to be stored on a device that easily fits in your pocket.

Image detail – Put simply, colour images preserve most of the feel of the original document with changes in ink, notations and highlighting all being perfectly visible…. this is not a trick that black and white scanning can achieve. Indeed some black and white scanners will just lose quite a lot of information that could be vital to someone reviewing the records in the future.

Unfortunately fast colour scanning is still beyond many practices mainly due to the limitations of the equipment being used – quite rightly, not many practices are willing to pay £30,000 for a scanner that will process just one job.

But we are!

Our complete document imaging service makes it easy

We collect your documents free of charge

The scanned images are converted into fully searchable colour PDF files that can be integrated into your existing systems, such as Docman, or simply used as a standalone digital filing system – no extra software required

The scanned files are optionally encrypted and returned to you either on CD or USB stick

The original paper files can either be returned to you or we can have them securely destroyed when you’re ready

We’re often asked “How much is it going to cost to scan it all?” and it’s never easy giving a figure that is reasonably accurate.

The usual method we employ is to simply multiply the number of archive boxes by the average number of image we would expect to create from each box. Although fairly good, this method is riddled with unknowns such as how full has the box been filled, or how much of the paperwork is printed double sided – and these are questions that largely remain unanswered until the scanning commences. As such the exact cost of a scanning project is sometimes unknown until it’s finished – until now!

Recognising that many Practice Managers would prefer a known cost before a project is started, we have now introduced a fixed flat rate charge per patient record. This price includes all document preparation, index creation, scanning in full colour, output as fully searchable PDF files and secure destruction of the scanned records. So regardless of whether you’ve got 50, 200 or 10,000 records to scan – we can tell you exactly how much it’s going to cost before you start – even if they look like this!

We’ve now got a trial version of of our digital signature capture service running.

It allows a signature to be captured in the field and passed back to our database servers live via standard GPRS, 3G or WiFi services. This is a great solution for smaller companies wanting the advantages of a live signature capture system without the inherent cost.

As the system runs on the iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch (via Wifi) the device can serve many purposes. We are also able to capture other data, such as whether part of a delivery was missing or damaged.

All this data is sent live back to our server where it is immediately available to others such as customer services via their own dedicated web portal.

Just one of the great advantages of scanned document archives is that it’s possible to retrieve documents from any remote location.

To illustrate this point we have set up a simple search page that will allow you to conduct live searches and download the found documents. If you would like to try this out simply click here – the search page will open in a new window.