Imagine being able to find, open, sort, move and review thousands of documents at the touch of a finger. Or how about sorting through millions of documents in hours rather than weeks?
Scientists at Xerox Corporation, for which Bytes Document Solutions is the distributor in 27 African countries, have created a prototype “smart document” review system that allows users to gather around a large touch-sensitive tabletop display and sort documents by moving their fingers across the screen. The interface is similar to an iPhone or smartphone touch screen - but more than 150 times larger, making it easy for several people to work together.
Developed by researchers at the Xerox Research Centre Europe, the document review technology assists users to quickly group similar documents. Documents can be put side-by-side for comparison, scaled up or down, or piled in a corner of the table, just as real sheets of papers are placed on a real desk, but with all the capabilities of digital documents. And, by simply pointing to a few relevant documents, the user “teaches” the system what information is important. The system then uses this knowledge to automatically categorise and sort millions of documents in a fraction of the time it takes to do so manually.
The technology promises to revolutionise document-intensive industries such as insurance, pharmaceutical, medical, financial and legal. For example, in the e-discovery process, attorneys can examine a small portion of the evidence documents, indicating which ones are relevant to the case and those that are not. The smart document review system will then quickly scan the entire repository, automatically retrieving all the related documents.
“When you consider the millions of images and pages involved in litigation, patent searching and filing, hospital care, banking and statutory processes, there is an obvious opportunity to improve efficiencies,” says Hennie du Plessis, CEO of Bytes Document Solutions. “A tool like this can have a major impact on the cost, accuracy and speed of document review.”
Xerox's document review system builds on previous technology called CategoriX, developed by a team of researchers at Xerox Research Centre Europe. CategoriX itself is currently available as part of the Xerox Litigation Services suite of offerings for advanced e-discovery in the legal industry, and combined with the touch-table screen from PQ Labs, forms the basis of this smart document review prototype. The prototype system is going through a customer pilot phase before being further developed for commercialisation. Availability will be announced at a later date.
Share