Simplified administrative processes for cancer patients in the U.S.

As the largest non-profit cancer care provider in Arkansas (U.S.), CARTI provides treatment and support to around 40% of the state’s oncology cases. Their mission is to make healthcare more accessible and to make life easier for cancer patients during those hard times. One way CARTI assists patients is by offering them convenient workflows, enabled by streamlined technological solutions inside the CARTI app.

CARTI wanted to reduce the burden of transmitting physical documents, such as forms or insurance documents, which patients previously had to submit via mail or in person. After all, cancer patients should not have to face additional hurdles during their treatment.

What was needed was a convenient way to digitally transfer those documents. Even inexperienced users should be able to simply scan the papers and send them to the headquarters with just a few clicks. With this goal in mind, the oncology provider searched for digital tools to enable a simple, digital document workflow.

While trying Open Source solutions, CARTI’s developer team noticed that image capture, border detection, and auto-skew algorithms were not up to the required standards. Two alternatives now presented themselves: One was to develop a complex UI with manual cropping and skew-correcting features in-house.

The other way was to opt for an SDK that offers the desired functionality, can be implemented easily in no time, and provides the highest possible ease-of-use with its automated post-processing.

With its ease of use, including user guidance, automatic cropping, rotation, and perspective correction, the Scanbot SDK offers the perfect solution to enable digital document transmission – even for patients with less technical affinity.

The quick integration and low associated workload also fit CARTI’s requirements well, as they wanted to provide patients with improvements to the treatment process as fast as possible. Looking at the detailed Scanbot SDK documentation, CARTI developers determined that integration would be quick and easy. During the integration process, Scanbot’s enterprise-grade support was on hand with advice and assistance, providing the optimal foundation for digitizing the workflow.

Prior to the integration of the Scanbot SDK, patients in CARTI’s care had two options to submit documents: in person and via mail.

Workflow 1: In person

1. The patient needed to visit a CARTI office in person.
2. Here, staff had to find and print the correct document for this specific patient.
3. Then, the patient filled out their form and handed it back to the front desk.
4. Now, the CARTI front-desk staff needed to scan the document correctly, using a conventional hardware scanner.
5. Finally, the scan had to be sent to the correct department in the back-office.

Since several employees and departments were involved in this process, complications regularly arose at the various communication points.

Workflow 2: Via mail

1. The patient received the paper form via mail and filled it in at home.
2. They then used the attached business reply envelope to send back the completed form to CARTI’s headquarters.
3. Here, the form was then processed accordingly.

Unfortunately, the documents were sometimes lost in the mail. Forms also ended up being filled incorrectly or were submitted late. As a result, some patients also missed critical deadlines.

These complications contradicted the very purpose of CARTI and needed to be fixed by a modern scanning tool inside their mobile app.

1. Patients now receive their forms by mail, email, or at a CARTI office. They can fill them with pen and paper, a method that many older patients still prefer.
2. Afterward, they can easily capture the document with just one click, using the Scanbot SDK inside the CARTI mobile app. Automated cropping and skew correction create perfect results without effort on the part of the patient.
3. The finished scan is then routed back to CARTI by just pressing the “Submit” button.
4. Via CARTI’s interface engine, the scan is then directly transferred to the responsible department. Here, the correctness of the form can be evaluated immediately, cutting down turnaround time immensely.

Both patients and CARTI now profit from precise document capture, safe transmission, and decreased overall workload in the back office. Turnaround time was shortened significantly, allowing services to be performed frictionlessly. Thanks to the features’ ease-of-use, customer engagement increased. CARTI patients are happy to submit documents from the comfort of their homes. During their difficult times, cancer patients can now rely on a convenient feature that makes their day-to-day lives easier.

Originally, Scanbot wanted to scan everything: from simple barcodes to freight bills, medical certificates, and invoices – and now it can! There are endless ways this can make things easier for businesses and their customers. Our easy-to-integrate software simplifies workflows in document management, customer onboarding, sales, or HR.

Now, Scanbot applies computer vision algorithms and machine learning models to understand each individual document type. This opens up new usage scenarios, such as automated document workflows, and creates even more opportunities to connect and work with data in real-time.

At the same time, Scanbot highly values the security of its users’ sensitive data. The Scanbot SDK works exclusively with on-device intelligence, which keeps documents safe from any external or man-in-the-middle attacks. No data is ever stored on Scanbot’s servers or any third-party servers, satisfying the highest data protection standards.