Those using paper forms do not have a computer linked to electronic mail or the Internet, and even well connected individuals do not always have a computer available when they need to place orders, fill out credit card receipts, or file requests for healthcare coverage. Paper forms are still the least expensive data capture device for many business applications where individuals without network connections must provide data for entry into a computer system.

Forms-based electronic data interchange software or Internet browser software would seem a good solution to submitting data. However, healthcare insurance providers' inability to affect how users request coverage indicates that a low-tech, paperbased form solution is still the most effective method of obtaining data.

Even though standard forms are used, the healthcare insurance providers have virtually no control over the computing architecture used by those requesting coverage. For this reason, handwritten and typewritten forms dominate claims submission for healthcare insurance coverage.

Manual data entry is a slow, laborious, and expensive process compared to computer recognition of text and its subsequent processing. Data entry specialists are becoming increasingly difficult to employ in the United States since it is tedious, boring work. Frequently, data entry is outsourced to firms in Mexico, the Caribbean, and India, where labor is far less expensive and the desire to obtain any computer systems work is much higher than in America.

Place a form or document into a document scanner connected to a computer workstation. The document's appearance gets captured as a raster image in the manner usually associated with document imaging software; a bit-mapped image comprised of detailed black dots on a white background is produced, usually as a tagged image format (TIF) file. Software then performs image analysis to properly align the image, match ICR zones with expected data fields, and begin categorizing the data as hand print, typed characters, or other data types.