DOCUMENT Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 29)

Log on at www.DOCUMENTmedia.com to read the second half of the article, discussing the statistical analysis procedures. You can instantaneously give feedback to the authors right at the end of the article! often used to boost accuracy in generic text processing, is virtually useless when applied to forms processing. A form is always speciﬁc to something — a department, product or procedure — and so customized dictionaries speciﬁcally created for particular ﬁelds on a given form always work best. Data Validation Routines Data validation routines are used to ensure that recognition results are consistent with the universe of data associated with a speciﬁc application. Validation routines can be used to spot errors that are created by humans as well as by ICR. Simply put, validation routines are algorithms that examine ICR results for reasonableness against predetermined standards. There are three basic types of validation routines: (1) look-up tables, (2) data/ range checks and (3) relationship validation. Most systems use some validation routines to help solve for ICR errors, although not every system uses all three types. Unlike generic text recognition applications that utilize standard English language spell checkers, the content of a forms processing application always contains words and terms which are idiosyncratic to the industry of the form type that is being processed. Consequently, forms processing applications often require more sophisticated validation routines than full text processing applications. 1 Lookup Tables Lookup tables are used extensively to improve accuracy. In this case, one or more ﬁelds are validated against a database. If there is an exact match, the odds are good that the data is correct since it proved to be congruent with a set of known quantities. Integrated spelling checkers are a common table lookup used for full text applications. Good examples of table lookups would be lists of product codes in mail order entry applications or a patient identiﬁcation number on a medical claim form. Interestingly enough, there are cases where for some ﬁelds — for example, addresses — not all of the characters need to be correct. If 80% of the characters match, the system can correct the remaining 20% and accept the database record as valid. This approach eliminates the manual correction of that 20%. When it comes to addresses, consider the usefulness of tablebased validation in barcoding of outgoing mail in a large insurance company. It is not unusual for a large insurance company to send out over 200,000 letters to its customers every day. If the insurance company chooses to barcode the letters instead of leaving that task to the U.S. Postal Service, then it will receive a reduction in postage, amounting to at least ﬁve cents per letter on a First-Class envelope. This process is achieved by scanning each letter, intelligently recognizing each machine-printed address, then converting that information into a standard barcode format and spraying the barcode in the same location on each First-Class envelope that is mailed. Table-based validation is used extensively www.DOCUMENTmedia.com april.08 document 29 http://www.DOCUMENTmedia.com http://www.DOCUMENTmedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Document Magazine - April 2008

Document Magazine - April 2008 Contents Editor's View The Research Desk The Response Center BPM: Improving the Way You Process Contributing Writers Mapping Out Performance Build the Context Before You Move into the House of ECM Taking On the Big 3 The Human Connection Addressing Your Addresses Don't Call Us, We'll Call You The Mulitplying Image Recognizing Accuracy New Products Calendar Advertisers

Document Magazine - April 2008

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