This data can act as a stand-alone source of information, or it can double as an index for images of the documents. In either case, if the data required by the organizations was contained in a bar code, created at the beginning of the process, and that bar code could be read by each organization, it would eliminate a lot of data reentry. A standardized bar code format containing this data would eliminate the work involved with manually rekeying the data. All the data could be entered through the swipe of a bar code reader, or, if the document images are being transferred, the bar codes could be read and the data extracted by software which reads bar codes on images. In the legal market, case records, testimonies and affidavits are often passed among law firms and in the health-care industry patient records are moved between facilities.
Many industries can benefit from a standardized bar coding system for documents.
Coar acknowledges that the greater availability of Code 39 technology makes it attractive to integrators. Integrators can get away with Code 39s for proprietary applications because they can cross-reference documents with data already stored in the system to cut down on the amount of data they need to include in the bar code. But in order to include enough data so that a document can be moved independently among different systems, a 2-D bar code is necessary. According to Coar, the committee has settled on using a variation of existing EDI document formats. The information contained in a typical EDI transaction can easily be put in a PDF 417 bar code.