Mi-Co Marks Third Anniversary of Digital Ink Revolution for Mobile Data Capture

Research Triangle Park, NC. A new era in digital ink solutions began in the fall of 2002 with three major events: the launch of the Tablet PC; the launch of the Logitech io Digital Pen using Anoto functionality and forms automation software that supports both major handwriting capture platforms by Mi-Co, the mobile data capture company. To observe the 3rd anniversary of the these milestones, Mi-Co has a number of activities underway including the publication of a white paper by James Clary, CEO of Mi-Co, entitled Modern Mobile Data Capture Technology for Government and Enterprise Applications.

“Mi-Co welcomed the launch of the Tablet PC and the Logitech Digital Pen,” stated Clary, “because this marked the point where the hardware and software for capturing and recognizing handwritten data came into synchronization. Prior to November 2002, many companies, including, Mi-Co, utilized Pocket PCs and other handwriting capture platforms, including signature capture pads. Similar to the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer, the new Tablet PCs and Digital Pens legitimized and accelerated the use of handwritten input like nothing that had happened before. The result is that industrial strength solutions are showing up in successful mobile forms automation implementations for an increasing number of enterprise and government applications.”

Since the introduction of these robust hardware platforms by Microsoft, along with their hardware partners, and Logitech, the world’s leading supplier of computer mice, Mi-Co, has focused on offering forms automation solutions for key business and government markets such as healthcare with its sub-verticals; hospitals, home health and clinical trials and government-mandated inspections at the Federal, state and local levels. Mi-Co has signed major customers in these market segments including Sutter Health in California, the Indian Health Service, National Cancer Institute; United States Department of Agriculture, Internal Revenue Service and the City of Boston.

These industry and government rollouts marked two specific ways to approach the implementation of digital ink for paper forms automation; one focused on the Tablet PC and the other on the digital pen and paper process. Mi-Co’s single source code software, Mi-Forms, enables both classes of these modern hardware platforms to collect, recognize, validate and store both ink and recognized versions of handwritten input data.

Bill Gates formally announced the Microsoft Tablet PC in November 2002 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. Emphasizing the new role of the PC in the world of digital ink, Gates stated, “One debate that took place in the early '90s was whether a device optimized to be held in the hands with ink as a fundamental data type, would be a specialized device with its own applications or an [evolutionary] extension of the PC itself. We felt very strongly, even going back to those days, that it had to be an extension of the PC…”

At the 2002 rollout of the Logitech Digital Pen, Sr. Logitech VP David Henry stated, “While other attempts at pen input have started with the PC, with the goal of making the PC more friendly, our point of departure is pen and paper with the goal of making these elements more effective in the digital world.” This event legitimatized and made digital pen hardware generally available for the Anoto intellectual property that had been around for several years prior to this time.

Handwriting has been around for a few thousand years. As pen and paper continues to be a favorite way for humans to initially capture handwritten information, Tablet PC and Digital Pen hardware platforms running Mi-Forms software will play an increasingly important role in automating enterprise and government paper forms.

For information on downloading this white paper plus state-of-the-art handwritten forms automation solutions for both the Tablet PC and the digital pen, please see www.mi-corporation.com.

About Mi-Co

Mi-Co, the mobile data capture company, provides handwritten forms automation software that enables an efficient and effective process for capturing, recognizing and communicating handwritten information. Mi-Co’s enterprise Mi-Forms Software System provides flexible electronic forms design for data capture using digital ink. In addition, Mi-Forms Software has proven capabilities for handwriting interpretation and verification, data validation and the communication of forms-based data for enterprise and government users. Mi-Forms supports Tablet PCs, Digital Pens, Pocket PCs and signature capture devices. The company is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina with a Seattle, Washington customer service center.