The technology that enables us to extract information from scanned images of printed or handwritten documents is called Optical Character Recognition or OCR. It has applications for the processing of business contracts, receipts, utility bills, passports, product sheets, handwritten forms, bank statements, and a variety of PDF documents generated by businesses.
Accurate and reliable data extraction plays an important role in finance, accounting, electronic health record updates, insurance claims processing, personal and national security, logistics documentation, and legal documentation. The extraction accuracy is extremely important because OCR is often used to convert documents such as passports, invoices, or receipts, where every bit of information is vital and errors can prove costly.