Muirhead Office Systems, the Orpington, Kent-based software company that is now part of the Williams Holdings Plc group, has added its contribution to the growing document image processing market. Most of the major players, with the notable exception of ICL, have begun to take this market seriously and produce systems for it. Cimtech, the Centre for Information, Media and Technology based at Hatfield Polytechnic in Middlesex estimates that the market could be worth UKP1,000m a year soon. The attraction of the system for the likes of building societies and solicitors, lies in getting rid of the acres of office space reserved for filing, and gaining easier access to documents. Document image processing involves scanning a document and then recording it onto an optical disk, which has a huge capacity – a 5.25 optical disk can hold 22,000 A4 pages. Using a directory or index system, the documents can then be quickly retrieved on screen and edited, printed and re-stored as required. Muirhead claims to have developed one of the fastest retrieval times, using an indexing system that has seven referral fields for each document, and then once the document has been located, presenting it on screen in 0.125 of a second. The security and consequently the legality of electronic documents is still an unresolved issue. Muirhead’s system, reassuringly called the Icon Filesafe, contains a password system for each stage of access to a file, and an optional encryption key for higher levels of security. The system also marks each document, enabling its age to be established as well as automatically transferring dormant documents to an archive folder. But the legality of documents is still a slippery issue, according to Bernard Williams of Cimtech. Government departments, for example, do not accept electronic copies as evidence. In Britain there has not been a test case yet. Meanwhile, firms dealing in legal areas still have to keep original documents stashed away somewhere. The new Muirhead system is pitched at the middle to top end of the market. It is priced at UKP45,000, which includes Ricoh hardware consisting of an image scanner, a personal computer, a high resolution graphic screen for displaying the documents and a laser printer.
