Patent ID: 7508537

Claim:
A fully automated method for collecting reports of at least one parameter via a server having a processor, the method comprising the following steps: the server automatically, that is, independent of any required human intervention, receiving from an arbitrary machine of any of a plurality of senders, via a publicly accessible transmission channel, a transmittable electronic representation of an image of any of a plurality of a-sender-specific physical forms, said form having been converted directly, at a sender site, via the machine of the sender from a tangible state into the transmittable electronic representation, the sender-specific form having a plurality of data boxes, each box being in one of two states, which are darkened or not darkened, each box corresponding to an indicator of at least a partial value of at least one of the parameters; the processor automatically identifying the location of the data boxes that the sender can darken in the received representation of the image of the sender-specific physical form; the server automatically extracting from the identified data boxes the at least partial values of the corresponding parameters; and the server automatically storing the extracted values in a predetermined format in a memory for subsequent processing as well as the representation of the received physical form as it was received; wherein the method is fully automated and has no need for human intervention.