Kodak (NYSE:EK) today announced that Nugent Care, a Merseyside-based charity operating care homes, specialist schools and nurseries as well as providing support services for vulnerable people, has installed File Stream’s electronic document management software and a Kodak i1420 scanner solution to radically improve how care records are managed in the long term.

The new system will allow Nugent Care to easily meet exacting statutory requirements[1] to store paper work about people cared for, while improving access to information, enhancing security and reducing the physical storage space associated with filing.   The technology was installed in June 2010 for an outlay of just £5,500.

Founded in the 1850s by Father James Nugent, a pioneer in child welfare and social reform, Nugent Care today runs 7 adult care homes, 2 special needs schools, 3 children’s homes, 2 nurseries, as well as providing adoption and day care services.  Employing 850 staff, the charity is headquartered in Liverpool and looks after people primarily in the north west of England[2]. 

Sue Halliday, support officer in Nugent Care’s performance management unit (PMU), explains, “Current legislations means records for children have to be kept for 80 years and 6 years for adults.  With so many people helped over the years, we were simply running out of storage space in our establishments and an appropriate solution had to be found.”

Using offsite physical storage was rejected because of the expense, and a computer-based solution ultimately chosen.  Further to extensive research of available systems on the market, File Stream’s EDMS version 4.2 was selected because it is easy-to-use, competitively priced, and met Nugent Care’s requirements today while offering a future expansion path if the organisation requires it.

Gary Jones, File Stream’s marketing manager, says, “Nugent Care wanted an EDMS so that care records can be easily accessed by authorised personnel, revisions to any records monitored and logged to help with auditing, and timers applied to documents so that they automatically self destruct.”

Each care file contains a range of information such as medication and healthcare records, correspondence with social workers and local authorities, education reports and so on, and can contain hundreds of pages depending on how long the individual has been with the charity.

Nugent Care’s performance management unit – the department responsible for the charity’s archive – uses the system day-today, along with the purchasing department who has just started storing supplier contracts in it. 

Barbara Taylor, PMU team leader and the EDMS project head, says, “We’ve wanted to install a EDMS solution for years but most were just too expensive for a charity where service delivery is the priority.  The new File Stream and Kodak solution means we can move forward efficiently and not be bogged down by the ever growing issue of case file management.”

Given the range of document sizes and paper type, Nugent Care selected a duplex Kodak i1420 low volume production scanner which features SurePath paper feeding. This allows continuous scanning of any document irrespective of length, condition or thickness - paper can be processed from wafer thin 34 g/m2  to card 413 g/m2 thick. 

Able to handle volumes up to 12,000 pages per day, the scanner can handle 60 pages per minute at 200 dpi. Sue Halliday adds, “Duplex scanning was a key requirement as a lot of our documents are double-sided.”

Kodak’s 3D ultrasonic multi-feed detection technology automatically senses and stops documents if pages stick together, plus the 150 page hopper can be continuously fed even without the scanner stopping.  Perfect Page imaging technology ensures quality image production first time, every time.

The charity is delighted with the system even though the deployment is relatively new.  The File Stream EDMS is set up so that documents are indexed by establishment, name of person and their date of birth.

Sue Halliday acknowledges there is much work ahead, “We’d got to a stage where people were practically screaming at us to get rid of records because there was no more office space available.  It will take us time to make a dent in our paperwork, but we’ve now got the technology in place to help us do this and free up space, while making accessing information so much easier.”

This means that should people who have been in Nugent’s care want to see their own records, responding to such enquiries will be far easier for PMU staff who can review files electronically rather than searching through filing cabinets and archive boxes in multiple locations.

Neil Murphy, Kodak’s UK sales manager for document imaging, says, ”The Nugent Care project is an interesting example of how organisations can take control of their paper mountains for a relatively modest investment.  Files Stream’s EDMS and our i1420 scanner delivers exactly what is required – a cost effective and straight forward way to manage and digitise paperwork so images are sharp and documents are then easy to find.”