Xerox Develops Multitouch Document Review Technology

Without a doubt, Xerox is one of the world's most innovative companies (after all, many inventions that we take for granted today were actually initially developed by Xerox, such as the mouse), so it should come as no surprise that they're also actively involved in the field of multi-touch solutions, the company just revealing the fact that they've come up with a product of this type used for document sorting.

Scientists at Xerox Corporation have created a prototype “smart document” review system where users can gather around a large touch-sensitive table top display and sort documents merely by moving their fingers across the screen.

The interface is as familiar as using your iPhone or smartphone touch screen – but more than a 150 times larger, making it easy for several people to work together.

Developed by researchers at the Xerox Research Centre Europe, the document review technology assists users to quickly group similar documents.

Documents can be put side-by-side for comparison, scaled up or down, or piled in a corner of the table, just as real sheets of papers are placed on a real desk, but with all the capabilities of digital documents.

And, by simply pointing to a few relevant documents, the user “teaches” the system what information is important, the system then using this knowledge to automatically categorize and sort millions of documents in a fraction of the time it takes to do so manually.

Xerox’s document review system builds on previous technology called CategoriX, developed by a team of researchers at Xerox Research Centre Europe. CategoriX itself is currently available as part of Xerox Litigation Services suite of offerings for advanced e-discovery in the legal industry.

“When you consider the vast number of documents involved in litigation, patent searching, government security and intelligence analyst reports, it’s easy to understand how some review efforts involve millions of documents,” said Caroline Privault, project leader at the research center, adding that “we believe that a tool like this will have a major impact on the cost, accuracy and speed of document review.”

The prototype system is going through a customer pilot phase before being further developed for commercialization, with pricing and availability details to be announced at a later date.