Document scanning an E-filing barrier? Grab the phone!

I was reading an excellent E-filing report from the New York State Unified Court System today and noticed that several problems identified in the comment section revolved around the cost for organizations to be able to scan documents.  Well, I thought to myself, let’s see if there is an app that can help?

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The good news is that there isn’t just one mobile phone app to scan a document, there are a bunch of them.

A “Mashable” website post listed five Android smartphone apps that can be used to “snap up those docs and get them into the cloud where they belong”.  I like that attitude.

The apps listed in his post that create PDF documents were:

1. CamScanner which has a free version to test ( “Free / $4.99 for full license and features” )
2. Document Scanner that scans directly to PDF ( “Free / $3.98 for full version” )
3. Droid Scan Pro PDF  ( “$4.99 for PDF functionality” )
4. Scan to PDF (“Free / $.99 optional purchase for a job well done” )
5. PDF Scanner (“$1.99 )

Also in the Google Play Android store I found:

PDF Document Scanner (Free?)
Mobile Doc Scanner Lite (Free?)
Quick PDF Scanner Free (Free)

And more...

Turning now to the Apple iPhone/iPad systems in the iTunes App Store.  A compilation article was posted on C|Net back in 2012 titled, “Five apps for scanning documents on your iPhone”. The author listed the following apps in the article:

1. TurboScan ($1.99)
2. Scanner Pro ($6.99)
3. Genius Scan (Free/$2.99)
4. CamScanner Free (Free/$4.99 to lose the watermark)
5. Prizmo ($9.99)

Last, I stumbled onto some enterprising folks who made “scanning stands” for the iPhone out of corrugated cardboard. Check them out here, here, and here.

So with this many apps available (plus stands!), I must ask, why doesn’t someone build an E-filing app that uses this kind of capability overcome the "scanning problem"?  It would seem to make a lot of sense especially for self-represented E-filing.

Just saying…