Basics
Preconditions
Hardware
Recognition Capabilities
Data Ownership and Security
Data Capture
Data Quality Control
Data Deliverables
Phone Management
Impact
Other Questions

Basics

Preconditions

Hardware

Recognition Capabilities

Data Ownership and Security

Basics

Write on paper with a pen. Take a picture. Handwriting is digitized. Automated structured exports (.xlsx and .csv), data quality reports, and summary statistics are produced in a snap.

Preconditions

We design the forms together. There are two options:
If you are familiar with OpenDataKit (ODK), you can provide an XLSForm specifying all required questions, variable names, and constraints. After undergoing a testing and acceptance process, we transform your form into a ScanForm. This is the fastest option!
If you are not familiar with ODK, just provide your forms in any format (e.g. PDF, Microsoft Word), and we will work with you to gather all necessary specifications.
Almost! Most design can be done by yourself by providing an XLSForm. Our team can then adjust the visual layout through an efficient revision process.
Not at this time, but soon! ScanForm is a new way of typesetting paper forms to ensure high quality data capture. For now our system requires various special elements to be present on the page, including boundary lines and QR codes. This is then coupled with a digital back-end tailored to your form, to enable accurate recognition and checking of handwritten content.
One option is in XLSForm format, which minimizes conversion time. Alternatively if you have a Word document or PDF, you can also share that with us, and we can work with you to fill in the business logic.
We are a social enterprise searching for the best ways to grow our positive impact and our technology. At this stage, a commercial business model seems best for ensuring sustainability and professional service. In the future, we are likely to open source components of our solutions, particularly to support interoperability efforts. If you are an expert or donor that can advise us on this issue, please feel free to write to us.
The best option is to contact us via Business Inquiry Form, where we ask some questions that allow us to tailor an offer to your needs. If you prefer to ask a few questions first, please write to scanform@qed.ai.
There’s no limit. We can configure our system to handle anywhere from one page a day to hundreds of thousands per day, depending on your needs.
First, we kindly request that you fill out our Business Inquiry Form, which covers most of the key questions. Based on that, we can then arrange a call about next steps.

Hardware

For scanning, you only need a smartphone or a tablet with Android version 5.1 and above. A typical device on the order of 125 USD will likely have a camera of high enough quality to capture ScanForms well.
Not yet, although we’re investigating that area. We focus on Android phones since they tend to be more affordable, accessible, and common throughout the Global South.
Yes, with Android 5.1 or above. Please contact us before purchase so we can help assess camera quality and other parameters.
No, ScanForm can be printed on any white matte paper.
No, you can fill in ScanForms with any black or dark blue pen. Black pens are used in good clinical practices.
No. Just use the Android phone. Our technology de-warps pages with high accuracy. There is no need for source documents to ever leave the facility.

Recognition Capabilities

Yes, we can! And the AI is calibrated to learn how letters are written in the countries that we serve.
Yes, we can! And the AI is calibrated to learn how numbers are written in the countries that we serve.
Yes, we can.
Yes, we can. You can specify what are the legal numbers or characters for a given field.
Not yet, but we’re investigating that area.
ScanForm’s AI is locale-specific and custom designed, trained on a very large dataset of locally collected handwriting samples. In this way, we have been able to achieve accuracies over 99% for numbers and letters, along with nearly 100% accuracy for optical marks. The system’s AI is also updated on a quarterly basis, and continues to improve by way of rapidly advancing context-specific AI that respects business logic constraints. Whenever deploying ScanForm into a new region, our team tests our AI with local representative handwriting datasets to ensure that the system will work as intended, and mobilizes aggressive local data collection efforts if more AI training is required.
The processing can take only a minute or two. The bigger source of delay, in most of our use cases, is availability of the internet. Most of our users work in resource-constrained environments, the internet is often not available at the time of photo capture. Thus photos are cached on the phone, and when wifi or mobile data returns, they are uploaded at that location, and processing proceeds within minutes of upload.
Not necessarily. ScanForm AI learns real-life handwriting examples, including poor handwriting. The most difficult cases are presented to a human verifier (can be from your team) that advises if necessary. We also have ample evidence that ScanForm improves the handwriting of doctors and clinicians, once they realize that a digital system is ingesting everything they write and gives them data quality reports on a regular basis.
ScanForm has also supported data capture campaigns in non-English languages based on the Latin alphabet, such as French, Swahili, and Chichewa. It has been used in Francophone countries such as Cameroon, Burkina Faso, and Benin.
Right now we are not supporting characters from these languages, although this may change in the future. However, if your forms contain only numerical and multiple choice questions, then we can still support your form. (For example, a form whose questions are written in Chinese characters, but whose answers draw from bubble marks and Roman numerals.)
Yes we can - with almost 100% accuracy.
Yes we can, on multiple levels. We can have them look different on paper, enforce human verification if the number of selected options is different than expected, flag the already verified records that have an incorrect number of choices - depending on your needs.

Data Ownership and Security

You own your data.
Depending on your needs, ScanForm's web server can either be deployed using local infrastructure, or by using our GDPR-compliant cloud-based infrastructure based on Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The latter minimizes cost, but the former may be encouraged by government regulations. We work with you to help ensure that local infrastructure can meet ScanForm’s performance specifications.
ScanForm implements security measures at multiple steps of the workflow. We start with designing forms such that personally identifiable information (PII) is positioned in the margins, and our on-phone image cropping stops PII from ever being stored on the phone.
Mobile device management is also used to lock down phone functionality, such that non-work related applications are unavailable and the general attack surface is decreased. In the event that a phone is stolen, it can also be remotely erased.
We provide secure encrypted transmission of data from phones to the server, enforced by SSL. We do not store user passwords, only their hashes. Encrypted storage of all credentials in deployment. Data visibility is scoped per project, such that members of one project cannot view data from another project.
ScanForm has also undergone and passed data protection impact assessments carried out in the UK for GDPR compliance. It has also been used for NASCOP-based data workflows in Kenya. More detailed documents about the measures we use to provide secure services are also available on request for engaged customers.
Information collected using ScanForm is recorded, handled and stored using methods that satisfy the requirements of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In many countries, health data protection acts are still emerging, but most are borrowing heavily from the GDPR. Deployments on strictly local infrastructure are also possible and have been done, as long as the performance requirements can be met. You own exclusive rights to your data at all times.
By default, QED employees do not have access to ScanForm data. If you authorize QED to perform certain analyses that require access, this data is only held temporarily on an encrypted volume and is not allowed to persist on any employee’s desktops, phones, or laptops.
You can specify exactly which people should have access, and you also specify the scope of that access.
We are in the process of adding 2FA for data download endpoints, for added security.
Yes! ScanForm has been integrated with DHIS2 in multiple countries. This is usually the first integration requested by host nations. We have worked with DHIS2 maintainers in many different countries and are very familiar with aligning data dictionaries and pushing to DHIS2 API endpoints, either directly or through mediators.
Yes! ScanForm has been integrated with multiple EMRs. The most common is variants of OpenMRS, but we have also integrated with customized, country-specific EMRs that are not derived from OpenMRS. ScanForm can also be used as a faster alternative to a keyboard for ingesting data into the EMR, or as a backup solution at sites with sufficient infrastructure to run EMR but are sometimes taken offline due to load shedding or server downtime.

Data Capture

At this time, there is no limit. But practically speaking, organizations are often limited by the number of phones being used in health facilities or amongst community workers.
Yes, photo takers can upload independently and in parallel.
In such cases, usually the algorithm flags that data element to a human verifier for further inspection, and the verifier can then make a judgment call to select the correct answer. We have an easy-to-use verification interface for such purposes.
The error needs to be corrected and the page needs to be photographed again. ScanForm automatically detects that the new picture is a correction, marking this picture as a new instance of the page.
You need to take the pictures using the ScanForm mobile app.
No - you can take pictures offline, and upload them once you connect to the internet.
Each page has a “Picture taken” checkbox you can use for marking already scanned pages. Also, if you accidentally re-take a picture of the same page, deduplication is handled automatically.
ScanForm tracks missing pages, and you get missing page notifications built into the mobile app.
Each page has a unique identifier which allows ScanForm to detect that the page was already scanned. In that case, to avoid the duplicates in the dataset, the old picture is automatically discarded.
ScanForm handles longitudinal data capture in the same way that EMR and traditional paper systems have done. To track patients, some unique patient identifier (PID) must be assigned to the patients. This identifier must then be entered accurately for each form in the series. The PID can be constructed in many different ways, such as:
1. assigning your own PID in an initial registration form, and issuing a card/booklet (e.g. pregnancy pamphlet) that has the PID printed on it,
2. using national identification card numbers,
3. forming a PID that is scrambled from personal and demographic information
and many more variations, which are usually specified by the client. We have also implemented various strategies to improve PID transcription accuracy across forms, such as adding error correcting codes, or using barcodes in lieu of handwriting. Whatever your policy is, we can work with you. In the end, data from multiple ScanForm can be stitched together on our end to produce complete longitudinal patient records, grouped by their identifiers.

Data Quality Control

ScanForm generates automated data quality assessments (DQAs), tailored to meet project-specific business logic. This includes checks on numerical ranges, set memberships, completeness of fields, logical and quantitative relationships between fields, checks run across multiple forms, and more. The automated data quality assessments are generated every week and are paired with real-time messaging systems for live remote discussion, thereby displacing a huge expenditure often incurred by health organizations that run DQAs only once or twice a year. In addition to improving data quality, our automated DQA service has also helped epidemiologists detect critical deviations and misunderstandings in laboratory and testing protocols.
The DQAs can be automatically delivered through a variety of means, including customized data portals,

Data Deliverables

You can access and download the data at a secure portal that is custom-built for your project. The portal also contains links to analytics for tracking ground operations and key performance indicators. Core data deliverables can also be sent to a locally hosted endpoint of your choice upon request.
XLS and CSV are most commonly used, but we can provide other formats as well if necessary.
Yes, absolutely! You can use the name column in XLSForm for that, or provide us with an additional data dictionary.
Yes! We can calculate statistics for you. Many clients use ScanForm-ized versions of routine health registers, and ScanForm auto-generates and auto-sends MOH-compliant monthly summary statistics in near real-time by the 2nd of the month, thereby substantially reducing delays in monthly reporting and allowing health workers to focus on providing better healthcare, rather than tallying and transcription.
The statistics can be sent via email, chat systems, and also pushed to endpoints such as DHIS2.
Yes, we regularly generate business intelligence dashboards for clients that require this service. In the health space, we already have many dashboards covering key metrics required by particular donor agencies.

Phone Management

We provide enterprise Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. Using MDM, we can: enforce encryption and PIN usage – even if phones are stolen the data cannot be read from them without knowing the PIN, monitor the phones remotely, wipe phones if they are stolen, and remove the risk of misconfiguration.
Each person can log in with their own credentials, and log out of the mobile app after pictures are taken.
The mobile app enables users to log in using QR code, which is a very quick method. We can provide QR code cards for all photo takers.
No, photos are not transferred between phones.

Impact

ScanForm has been used across 9 countries, including for national-scale in Malawi and Cameroon, and at regional-scale in Nigeria and Kenya. Most of our applications to date have been for routine health surveillance in HIV, malaria, and reproductive health. However, ScanForm also has been used for education (e.g. attendance sheets and exams), agricultural research, and human rights. Our impact is exponentially growing and to date we have serviced over 30 million patient visits. We are the only scannable paper technology that has been successfully proven at national scale.

Frequently Asked Questions

Basics

Preconditions

Hardware

Recognition Capabilities

Data Ownership and Security

Data Capture

Data Quality Control

Data Deliverables

Phone Management

Impact

Other Questions