XRCE - Press

Intelligence artificielle en France : la carte des laboratoires

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 13:04:56 +0000

Xerox Funds 11 New University Research Projects

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 10:21:15 +0000

Xerox Reveals Breakthrough Software that Categorizes Text and Images at the Same Time

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 10:18:53 +0000

Xerox Research Centre Europe coordinates EU CACAO project to provide cross-language access to online catalogues and libraries

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 10:04:33 +0000

Uxbridge, UK, May 19, 2008 – The Xerox Research Centre Europe is coordinating a project, funded by the European Union, that will develop an innovative approach to accessing, understanding and navigating multilingual textual content in digital libraries and Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs).

Medical Researchers Tap Xerox “Text Mining” Tool to Curb Hospital-Acquired Infections

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 17:12:59 +0000

Medical Researchers Tap Xerox “Text Mining” Tool to Curb Hospital-Acquired Infections

Researchers Use Xerox Language Technology to Analyze Patient Records, Improve Quality of Healthcare in Hospitals

GRENOBLE, France, March 25, 2010 – Each year, hospital -acquired infections (HAIs) affect millions of patients around the world, killing hundreds of thousands. While doctors and nurses have stepped-up hand washing and other methods to curtail infection, linguists at Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) have teamed up with medical researchers in France to explore how “language technology” can help.

During a three-year project, researchers will use an advanced “text mining” tool developed by Xerox to analyze medical records, automatically identifying patients who could be at risk of contracting an HAI.

The project, titled Assistant de Lutte Automatisée et de Détection des Infections (ALADIN), is being sponsored by the French government in an effort to help detect HAIs more quickly and reduce infections.

The ALADIN team will use FactSpotter, a technology developed at the Xerox Research Centre Europe, in France, to review medical records and identify specific terms and sequences of facts that indicate a patient may have contracted an HAI. The software not only pinpoints meaningful pieces of information, such as patient symptoms, drugs and names of bacteria but also how they are linked to each other. When these links identify potential risk of an HAI, the system automatically alerts the staff, so preventative measures can be taken.

“HAI infections are complex and can have many different causes. They may be the direct result of the type of care or completely independent of it but linked to a patient’s illness or condition,” said Dr. Marie-Hélène Metzger, medical lead on the project. “Linguistic technology plays a vital role in extracting the information required to correctly judge the situation and make the right decision. That’s what this project is all about.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, hospital-acquired infections in the U.S. result in an estimated 1.7 million infections and as many as 99,000 deaths each year. The annual cost is pegged at $45 billion. In France alone it is estimated that 4,000 HAI related deaths occur each year and that a third of these could have been prevented.

“Every patient is different, which makes it impossible to capture every piece of relevant information in a checklist or form,” said Frédérique Segond, principal scientist at the Xerox Research Centre Europe and coordinator of the project. “Using our advanced text mining technology to analyze entire patient records, we can extract information specific to each case to help doctors evaluate the patient risk and quickly take the right action.”

The project brings together a range of unique competencies in the fields of natural language processing, terminology, knowledge representation, epidemiological surveillance, medicine and care associated infections. Technology experts come from Xerox’s Research Centre Europe, CISMeF: the Catalog and Index of French- language Health Internet resources; Vidal -the French equivalent of the Physician's Desk Reference; and the research team in public health and epidemiology from Université Claude Bernard – Centre National de Recherche Scientifique UMR 5558 in Lyons.

ALADIN is a three-year project sponsored by the French National Research Agency (ANRT) TecSan program, which is designed to promote applications in innovative health technologies. The program is aligned with the European Union strategy to improve patient safety and reduce healthcare costs.

Xerox & Healthcare

Xerox offers a range of Smarter Document Management^SM solutions and services for the healthcare industry. For example, the DocuShare Enterprise Content Management Platform gives healthcare organizations access to patient records in just seconds, reducing costs and improving patient care.

Through its extensive business process outsourcing services, ACS, A Xerox Company, touches the lives of nearly one in every three insured individuals in the United States. Working with 19 of the top 20 managed care health plans, ACS processes 250 million claims annually, reducing processing costs by up to 50 percent.

Medical Researchers Tap Xerox “Text Mining” Tool to Curb Hospital-Acquired Infections

Inside Innovation at Xerox: Smart Document Review Technology Puts Millions of Documents at your Fingertips

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 16:31:10 +0000

Press Release on Xerox website

Documents can be moved across digital table top, similar to real sheets of paper on your desk

Imagine being able to find, open, sort, move and review thousands of documents at the touch of a finger. Or how about sorting through millions of documents in hours rather than weeks?
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 uses this knowledge to automatically categorize and sort millions of documents in a fraction of the time it takes to do so manually.
The research technology promises to significantly improve the document review process, one of the biggest challenges for document-intensive industries such as insurance, pharmaceutical, medical, financial and legal. For example in the e-discovery process attorneys can examine a small portion of the evidence documents, indicating which ones are relevant to the case and those that are not. The smart document review system then quickly scans the entire repository, automatically retrieving all documents to be read by a professional.
“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. “We believe that a tool like this will have a major impact on the cost, accuracy and speed of document review.”
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 Legal Business Services suite of offerings for advanced e-discovery in the legal industry.
CategoriX is an automated document classification tool designed by scientists in linguistics and statistics. This technology combined with the touch-table screen from PQ Labs form the basis of this smart document review prototype.
The prototype system is going through a customer pilot phase before being further developed for commercialization. Availability will be announced at a later date.

Xerox dévoile Smart Document Review, une technologie permettant de manipuler des millions de documents du bout des doigts

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 16:05:19 +0000

Avec cette nouvelle technologie Xerox, les utilisateurs peuvent déplacer et modifier des documents numérisés comme s’il s’agissait de feuilles posées sur un bureau.

Press Release on Xerox web site

Avec cette nouvelle technologie Xerox, les utilisateurs peuvent déplacer et modifier des documents numérisés comme s’il s’agissait de feuilles posées sur un bureau.

Paris, le 17 janvier 2011 – Localiser, ouvrir, classer, déplacer et modifier des milliers de documents numérisés de façon tactile est désormais possible. De même qu’il devient facile d’effectuer le tri de millions de pages en quelques heures, là où il aurait auparavant fallu des semaines entières pour arriver au même résultat.

Les scientifiques de Xerox Corporation (NYSE : XRX) ont en effet développé un prototype technologique de gestion de documents baptisé Smart Document Review. Ce système permet à plusieurs utilisateurs de prendre place autour d'une grande table graphique et de classer des documents simplement en déplaçant leur index sur l'écran tactile. L’interface rappelle celle d'un iPhone ou d'un smartphone, mais avec une taille d’écran plus de 150 fois supérieure, pour une utilisation simultanée par plusieurs collaborateurs.

Développée par les chercheurs du Xerox Research Centre Europe, la technologie Smart Document Review permet de regrouper rapidement les documents similaires. Ils peuvent être agrandis, réduits, placés en vis-à-vis afin d'être comparés, ou encore empilés dans un coin de la table graphique comme s'il s'agissait de feuilles de papier posées sur un bureau, et ce avec tous les avantages de la numérisation. Il suffit à l'utilisateur de désigner du bout des doigts quelques documents représentatifs pour indiquer au système les informations les plus pertinentes. La technologie Smart Document Review s'appuie alors sur ces éléments pour classer automatiquement des millions de pages, offrant un gain de temps considérable. Les dossiers sont préparés pour une relecture précise d’un expert du métier.

Cette technologie promet d'améliorer de manière significative les processus d’examen des documents, une problématique essentielle pour des secteurs tels que la justice, l'assurance, l'industrie pharmaceutique, la santé et la finance où les volumes documentaires sont particulièrement élevés. Par exemple, avec le processus e-discovery, les avocats peuvent examiner uniquement une partie des preuves en indiquant celles qui sont pertinentes et celles qui ne le sont pas dans le cadre d'une affaire. Smart Document Review analyse ensuite rapidement l'ensemble du dossier et identifie automatiquement tous les documents devant être étudiés.

« Le nombre de pièces liées à des procès, des dépôts de brevets ou encore des rapports d’analyses gouvernementaux, illustre parfaitement la somme d'efforts à fournir pour gérer efficacement ces millions de documents », explique Caroline Privault, responsable du projet au centre de recherche Xerox. « Nous sommes convaincus que cet outil aura un impact majeur sur les coûts, la précision et la rapidité des processus de modification documentaire ».

Le système Smart Document Review de Xerox est basé sur la technologie CategoriX, développée par une équipe d'ingénieurs du XRCE de Grenoble. Cet outil permettant de classer automatiquement des documents, a été conçu par des chercheurs en linguistique et en statistique. Combinée à la table tactile de PQ Labs, cette technologie constitue la base du dernier prototype de Xerox.

Smart Document Review est actuellement soumis à une phase de tests auprès de certains clients et fera l'objet de développements supplémentaires avant d'être commercialisé (la date de disponibilité sera communiquée ultérieurement).

-XXX-

A propos de Xerox Europe:
Xerox Europe, filiale européenne de Xerox Corporation, commercialise une gamme complète de produits, solutions et services, ainsi que les consommables, matériels et logiciels associés. Ces offres s'articulent autour de trois axes : l’impression bureautique petits et grands volumes, l’impression de production et les environnements arts graphiques, et, les services incluant le conseil, la conception et la gestion de systèmes documentaires jusqu’aux solutions d’externalisation complètes. A la suite de l’acquisition d’ACS en février 2010, Xerox propose également des services d’externalisation de processus métier et de services informatiques que ce soit pour les entreprises ou les institutions gouvernementales. Ainsi, elles peuvent déléguer le traitement des données, les services liés aux ressources humaines, les fonctions financières, la. gestion de la relation client. Les 133 000 collaborateurs de Xerox veillent à satisfaire leurs clients dans plus de 160 pays à travers le monde.

Xerox Europe possède également des unités assurant la production et la logistique en Irlande, au Royaume-Uni et aux Pays-Bas, ainsi qu’un centre de recherche et de développement (Xerox Research Centre Europe) à Grenoble.

Real Innovation@Xerox: Xerox Drives Innovation with Virtual Lab Open to All

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 16:01:48 +0000

PDF version of the Press Release

Website invites anyone to explore latest Xerox technologies, interact with scientists, and contribute feedback instantly

WEBSTER, N.Y., Feb. 24, 2011—Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) has created a website to encourage customers to play a part in the exploratory research that serves as a source for new products, applications and services. Open Xerox is an online technology portal, providing instant access to the latest Xerox innovations and allowing anyone to test pilot technology and provide feedback directly to lab scientists and engineers. "At Xerox we encourage change, push the limits of the unknown, and explore new approaches to innovation,” said Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox’s chief technology officer and president of the Xerox Innovation Group. “Collaboration with users across the globe brings fresh ideas, diverse opinions and expertise that enable game-changing innovations for our customers.” Open Xerox was co-created by researchers at Xerox Research Centre Europe and Xerox Research Center Webster and also features projects developed at PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center. Users not only can try the applications but also register to access a wider range of technologies, run services and test technology integration in third- party applications. “Open Xerox is a virtual research lab where anyone from customers and fellow technology experts to potential partners can participate in testing our technology,” said Victor Ciriza, lab manager at the Xerox Research Centre Europe. Some services also can be accessed direct from Xerox multifunction printers equipped with EIP, the Xerox Extensible Interface Platform. Right now the site offers more than 20 services, some of which require a log-in. Here are a few of the available technologies:

Trailmeme –a Web publishing technology, allows users to create and publish creative and personalized paths through digital content to tell a story.
Simple Personalized Imaging - Using a simple wizard interface, users load their photo into the software and select a location for text, shaping the text to the perspective of the objects in the photo, so that words appear to belong to the original image.
Linguistic technology – state-of-the art tools that will divide up document text into nouns, verbs and other parts-of-speech for advanced knowledge extraction.
Xeproc – targeted at the software development community, this domain specific language (DSL) can be used to build a wide range of applications based on document processing, including transformation from one format to another, information extraction, indexing and navigation.

Xerox Researchers Crack the Code on Easier Ways to Cut Through the Clutter of Documents and Photos

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 15:53:53 +0000

GRENOBLE, France, March 30, 2011 -- “Just help make my work day run smoothly.” That’s what Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) often hears from clients who are trying to balance the frenetic pace of business today with the need to get basic work done. Simplifying the workplace so customers can allocate more time and resources to their core business is fundamental to the innovation incubating today in Xerox’s labs – and is the purpose of prototype customer care software revealed by the company this week. The software uses Web-based 3D virtual reality imaging to give Xerox customers instant access to live support for their printer or multifunction device.

Xerox scientists say the prototype pinpoints ways to ease customer frustration, shorten customer care calls and free up workers to focus on their real business. To help develop the prototype, ethnography researchers at Xerox’s Research Centre Europe studied the way customers responded to printer issues and examined the calls coming in to service centers.

“Our hands-on research provided an in-depth understanding of the subtle nuances that keep a workplace humming and the ‘pain points’ that create unnecessary frustration,” said So phie Vandebroek, Xerox’s chief technology officer and president, Xerox Innovation Group. "The knowledge led us to a novel approach that promises to help office workers minimize interruptions in their workday allowing our customers to focus on what matters most: getting their real work done.”

How Virtual Help Works

By pressing the ‘Help’ button on the screen of a networked multifunction system, customers can initiate a call to the support desk. As the agent accepts the incoming call, the system uploads a 3D model of the printer while gathering and displaying data on the status of the machine. The system simultaneously uploads the same 3D model on the screen at the customer site so the customer can view the image while talking to the help desk agent – leading to a real-time multimedia conversation.

Xerox is at the forefront of developing embedded and remote diagnostic services and offers several solutions including PhaserSMART®, a customer self help diagnostic tool, and Command Center, a tool that feeds information directly from the Xerox iGen4® and the Xerox Nuvera®digital printing systems to customer service technicians for faster support. This new virtual help desk prototype builds on the successful interactive capability launched with the Xerox WorkCentre® 7500 series called Xerox Online Support Assistant, which provides instant access to online support.

The virtual help desk is a research project in support of Xerox’s continued commitment to develop and incorporate the latest customer care technology in its printers.

About ethnography

Ethnography has been part of Xerox research expertise since the 1980s. Ethnographic researchers observe behavior in workplaces of all sizes.

XRCE researchers presented the technology at the 2011 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Hangzhou, China and the IEEE Virtual Reality 2011 Conference, Singapore.

PDF version of this Press Release

Real Innovation@Xerox: Xerox Researchers Crack the Code on Easier Ways to Cut Through the Clutter of Documents and Photos

ezp@xrce.xerox.com (Claudia HEYER) — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 15:47:03 +0000

Researchers Unveil Technologies That Put the Power of the Image to Work

Say you are a graphic designer working for a global health organization. You need to find the right photograph that conveys how critical good medical practices are to the lives of children. Using today’s imaging technology to sift through large photo collections and identify that image could take hours.
Today Xerox researchers have released technologies that make finding images to illustrate and communicate your message, easy. The imaging tools are available in the company’s online technology portal called Open Xerox, a web site that allows customers to demo new inventions and provide feedback.
The most recent crop of technologies, developed at the Xerox Research Centre Europe, are designed to help customers manage overflowing collections of information, documents and images. The new tools use machine learning and other techniques to analyze, classify and retrieve images and collections in new, creative ways. For example, one tool can sort vast photo collections according to a particular aesthetic style instead of a basic category.
"The demos illustrate how our imaging technology could be used to solve real business problems,"said Craig Saunders, manager of the computer vision research group based in Europe. "These technologies help customers find exactly what they need among huge collections of photos, scanned documents, drawings or marketing materials."
By making technology available through Open Xerox, the company invites customers, partners, technology experts and early adopters to play with the demos. "We want to know what you think, so we can continue to refine and test our technology to meet real needs,"said Saunders.
The new imaging demos available are:

- Similar Image Search – Capable of searching five million images in less than a second on a standard desktop computer, this technology efficiently allows users to search large collections of high quality photos, digital assets, graphic design elements, scanned documents or other media to help pinpoint the exact item you need. By representing images in a smart way (using robust, efficient, compressed image signatures) the technology works with all types of diverse media, providing a versatile search tool that does not rely on the cloud and is optimized for efficient memory and processing The technology compresses all the digital media it finds providing a critical building block for future services and applications
  The technology behind Similar Image Search can be used to help organize, visualize and query all types of image based repositories, from large photo stock databases, enterprise scale digital document repositories or a personal photo collection on your desktop.

- Image Categorizer – Previously announced, this technology is now available for testing and automatically classifies images according to their content. Targeted at advertising, marketing or photographers who manage large collections of images, it uses machine learning techniques and image processing algorithms to analyze and classify images into almost 700 different categories. Being able to classify images only on their visual content enables the automation and improvement of many tasks. For example, textual queries can be made without having to manually add relevant tags for each image. The technology also allows automated workflow routing based on image content alone often eliminating the need for costly Optical Character Recognition.

- Aesthetic Image Search – This new alpha prototype demo makes use of the image categorizer, but goes one step beyond and tackles the difficult task of trying to learn what makes an image special and unique. Many current methods for image classification are solely based on recognition of parts -- if you find some wheels and a road, then the picture is more likely to contain a car than a giraffe. In order to determine the aesthetic quality or stylistic elements of an image, a new approach is needed.
  Applications include searching large photo databases; helping to select the best photos for archival or printing or for marketing or advertising agencies that want to select a particular style of image among a vast collection.

- Catepix – Sophisticated image analysis technology is put to use in this fun application that will analyze your FacebookTM photos and determine how popular your images are among your Facebook friends and what your photos say about your personality. Add it to your profile and see what it says about you!

About Open Xerox
Open Xerox, launched last year, was co-created by researchers at the "Xerox Innovation Group and PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center. Users not only can try the services and applications online but also register to access a wider range of technologies from early stage alpha projects to more mature technologies, and can run services and evaluate technologies by integrating them directly into their own applications. Researchers use Open Xerox to gather feedback on new research prototypes as well as mature technologies.