American Medical Response

Kodak Digital ScienceTM Scanner 3500 Boosts Company’s Market Share

ROCHESTER, N.Y., December 28, 1998 — Six months after it began production, Kodak Document Imaging has shipped more than 1,000 units of the Kodak Digital Science Scanner 3500.

The success of the Scanner 3500 has enabled Kodak to double its market share in the mid-volume scanner market. Before the Scanner 3500 was introduced, Kodak had a 9 percent share of the mid-volume market. Since the scanner’s release on June 15, Kodak’s share has jumped to nearly 20 percent. While the Scanner 3500 is primarily responsible for this increase, sales of the Kodak Digital Science Document Scanner 5500 have also increased, compared with 1997.

“After shipping 1,000 Scanner 3500 units with less than six months of availability, I think it’s safe to say that this scanner has been well received by the mid-volume market,” said Tim Vaughan, worldwide marketing manager, mid-volume scanners, Kodak DI. “The Scanner 3500 has generated great enthusiasm from our channel partners and end-users alike because it has helped many small businesses with their mid-volume front-office requirements.”

The Scanner 3500 has found application in a wide range of industries around the world, including banking, insurance, healthcare and government. For example, both the 1,000th and 1,001st scanners are being installed at American Medical Response’s (AMR) California and Hawaii division. The scanners will capture patient care reports completed by ambulance personnel. The company purchased the scanner from Digital Documents, a Kodak channel partner that integrates document imaging solutions.

Kodak originally shipped the two Scanner 3500s to Cranel, Inc., a value-added distributor based in Columbus, Ohio. Susan Roper, a product sales manager for Cranel, attributes the Kodak 3500’s success to its “superior paper handling and image quality, combined with a reasonable price.”

“The Kodak Digital Science Scanner 3500 is a fantastic product,” Roper said. “We can’t keep them stocked on our shelves. Our customers love this product.”

After an AMR unit completes an emergency run, ambulance personnel complete a report detailing the patients’ chief complaints and any procedures performed by the emergency crew. The report is sent to the division’s main office in Modesto, Calif., for processing and microfilm. Hospitals, doctors, insurance companies and law firms request these forms on a daily basis.

In the past, AMR personnel manually entered the form’s information and then microfilm the report. Whenever AMR received a request for a report, a staff member had to locate the report from microfilm off-site. Filing over 500,000 images per month, AMR wanted to minimize storage costs as well as labor costs for retrieving reports and tracking down miss-microfilmed reports.

“We recommended the new Scanner 3500D for it’s image quality and ability to handle a wide variety of document conditions, including documents that were wrinkled or had ‘dog-ears’ and torn corners,” said Digital Documents President Bruce Genger.

As reports are received, they are digitally captured using the Scanner 3500s. TeleForm Form Processing Software extracts data fields used for retrieval of the reports and the reports are stored onto optical discs for near-line retrieval with EMC Documentum Document Management Software. AMR personnel can now quickly retrieve digital documents without leaving their desks.

American Medical Response is the nation’s largest publicly owned Ambulance Company in the United States. Operating in 39 states, AMR employs over 24,000 persons in 253 operating sites. AMR transports over 6 million persons per year in a fleet of more than 5,000 vehicles.

Based in Irvine, Calif., Digital Documents was founded in 1993. Digital Documents focuses on leading technologies in form processing and interpretation software, as well as document management software. It has won numerous reseller and application awards over the years for work done in the healthcare, financial, retail, manufacturing and government fields. Digital Documents can be found on the World Wide Web at http:www.d-docs.com.