Patient records, prescriptions, lab reports, and registration forms: just a few of the types of documents healthcare professionals must process. Yet accurate and efficient processing of this data is equally critical to not only ensure smooth patient care, but also to meet regulatory requirements. These factors are driving a growing demand in healthcare organizations for intelligent document processing automation solutions.
As an independent software vendor (ISV), you can meet this demand by integrating an advanced OCR API into your own software. By doing so, you can provide customers in the healthcare sector with an intelligent and accurate solution for their document-based processes.
In this article, we will address the following points:
- Why there is a need for an advanced OCR API in the healthcare industry,
- what healthcare use cases are possible with an advanced OCR API,
- what are considerations for ISVs when choosing an appropriate OCR API,
- what unique features you can integrate into your software with the Parashift Cloud OCR API, and
- what other benefits you as an ISV will gain with the OCR API.
The need for an advanced OCR API for the healthcare industry
Healthcare organizations need to process a myriad of documents, including patient records, health insurance records, test results, and many more. While some organizations automatically capture at least some documents with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) solutions, the limitations with those are just as clearly defined: The variation of documents is too great, and the solutions used are not built for it. Thus, manual processing is still present, at least in part, in most healthcare organizations. Manual document processing in key processes leads to delays and key challenges:
Complexity: Complex documents with complex structures, as well as formats with tables, charts and handwritten notes are the norm. Healthcare organizations cannot handle this diversity with inflexible OCR solutions.
Accuracy: Documents contain important data such as patient names, medical histories, and diagnostic information. The accuracy of this information is critical to patient safety and proper care. Traditional OCR systems are usually not accurate enough to handle this necessary level of detail.
Time sensitive: In the healthcare industry, timely decisions are critical. Documents such as lab reports or diagnostic imaging must be able to be processed smoothly to ensure rapid diagnosis and treatment.
Cost: The significant volume of documents is costly. Especially when organizations must rely on manual processes that require significant time and effort.
Regulations: Healthcare organizations have to comply with strict regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, GDPR, and other important privacy regulations. As such, they rely on compliant document processing solutions that insure these regulatory requirements are met at all times.
These challenges highlight the need for a powerful data extraction solution for the healthcare sector.
Use cases for modern OCR API in healthcare
If you are an ISV and have already developed an OCR solution for capturing data or have integrated it into your application from another vendor, this is certainly a plus. However, the options for your healthcare customers are severely limited with these standard OCR APIs. Integrating a modern, powerful cloud OCR API (Application Programming Interfaces), often referred to as Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), helps you to be able to cover the actual requirements of document-based processes. That’s because IDP goes far beyond the capabilities of traditional OCR: high-performance IDP includes additional features such as automatic document classification, unstructured data extraction, and workflow automation. In addition, the solution is constantly improving thanks to AI and machine learning technologies.
Intelligent Document Processing use cases in the healthcare sector include the following:
Patient data management in clinics: IDP helps in faster and more accurate processing of patient data in the healthcare sector. Paper documents can be automatically captured and the data stored in a structured format. Clinics use it to link medical reports with electronic health records, significantly reducing the workload for staff.
Medical prescriptions in pharmacies: Pharmacies can scan medical prescriptions. The data is automatically captured and extracted using IDP, and the relevant information is matched with existing databases. In this way, medical prescriptions can be automatically validated.
Optimized processes for health insurers: Many health insurers need to enter customer data into their systems from both machine-written and handwritten forms. Instead of manual entry by employees, which makes the process error-prone and time-consuming, IDP takes over. The U.S. health insurer Medica, for example, has been able to eliminate manual data entry and make its processes more efficient thanks to Intelligent Document Processing. This also has a positive effect on customer satisfaction. Furthermore, IDP allows insurers to automatically extract important line item data, such as the name of a drug, from pharmacy receipts.
Forms in labs: For labs, Intelligent Document Processing is also a gamechanger. IDP automatically captures the relevant data from lab forms and passes it on to downstream processes in a structured manner.
For the forward-thinking software vendor, integrating an extensive OCR API is a smart move, providing customers in the healthcare industry with intelligent and efficient document processing.
Key considerations for ISVs when integrating a versatile OCR API
As an independent software vendor for the healthcare industry, you want to cover the problems of the organizations with the integration of a versatile OCR API on the one hand. On the other hand, you must always ensure that you comply with regulatory requirements regarding patient privacy and data protection.
So, when integrating a powerful OCR API, you as an ISV should consider several factors, including:
Functionality: This factor includes the scope of functions such as document layout analysis, handwriting recognition, and forms recognition. At the same time, it also refers to accuracy: ensuring high data accuracy during data extraction is key when weighing the appropriate OCR API since high quality data is essential in its output. Furthermore, functionality also includes scalability: When you integrate a cloud OCR API into your own software, you want to be sure that your customers can use it to process small to large volumes of documents automatically and reliably.
Compliance, security and privacy: Healthcare organizations are subject to strict regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, GDPR and other privacy regulations. As a software developer, it is imperative that you ensure that the OCR API meets these requirements and guarantees patient privacy and data security.
Integration: As an ISV, pay attention to the ease of integration of the OCR API. Choose a solution that offers a flawlessly documented API and assures vendor support for smooth integration.
Customization: Healthcare organizations often have specific document processing requirements that cannot be met by standard OCR APIs. As an ISV, choose a solution that offers comprehensive capabilities, plus the ability to customize without impediments.
Why Parashift Cloud OCR API is the future for ISVs
The Parashift Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solution is a cloud-based platform that can capture data from unstructured and structured documents without configuring rules or templates. As an ISV, you can easily integrate the versatile Parashift IDP into your own application via REST API and benefit from unique features and capabilities.
These are some of the features of the Parashift cloud OCR API:
Single API for hundreds of use cases: Streamline the integration of hundreds of use cases by using a single API for everything. Plus, use webhooks to keep track of processes and interactions. Configure specific use cases yourself on the platform and use them immediately via the OCR API.
Scale Deep OCR APIs With Parashift, you say goodbye to standard OCR APIs that are not only difficult to customize, but also require endless training. Instead, you simply create new use cases based on continuous learning. You customize Deep OCR APIs to meet your own needs, giving you maximum flexibility. Plus, Parashift’s Swarm Learning Technology combines learning data from all use cases and all customers on the platform, continuously improving the Cloud OCR Software API. This ensures the highest recognition rates for completely unknown documents, and more training data generates better and better use cases.
Improve data capture accuracy: You can send back the learning data generated in your application via the Parashift Feedback API. This continuously improves the accuracy of data collection, which is key for healthcare organizations.
Security of cloud OCR API and enterprise-grade compliance: Parashift runs in ISO27001 and HIPAA-compliant data centers and is a fully GDPR compliant cloud platform. This makes Parashift a trusted provider for integrating a cloud OCR API into your software. It also makes the solution perfectly suited for the strict security guidelines of the healthcare sector.
The first cloud OCR software API that continuously learns for text recognition online: the future of OCR
Benefits for ISVs with the integration of a Cloud OCR API
As an ISV, you integrate a powerful OCR API from a specialized IDP provider like Parashift into your own applications. This way, you add advanced data extraction and document processing capabilities. As an independent software vendor, the Parashift Cloud OCR API brings you additional benefits:
Cost savings: Parashift IDP saves you the cost of developing and maintaining a highly complex technology. Instead, you use the modern Cloud OCR API and get a modern, maintenance-free SaaS solution in your application.
Improved customer retention: By improving the accuracy, efficiency, and ease of use of the modern IDP solution, you increase customer satisfaction and reduce turnover among organizations.
Increased competitiveness: With the expanded offering of advanced Intelligent Document Processing capabilities and the cost savings, you will stand out from your competition. At the same time, you can tap into new revenue streams with superior capabilities.
By integrating Parashift with our Karedocs document management system, we can offer a wider variety of improved use cases for value-added services to our clients. – Renjith Mohan, CEO at NeoLotex Business Solutions
Forward-thinking ISVs integrate the powerful Parashift OCR API and provide healthcare organizations with a more accurate and efficient document processing solution instead of wasting time on hard-to-solve data extraction problems.
Talk to us and integrate the Cloud OCR API into your software!
