Our History
In 1991, Freedom Business Machines was established as a premier hardware distributor for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).  By 1994, Freedom had evolved into a provider of document management software solutions and had carved a niche for itself by providing solutions in the healthcare industry focusing on clinical laboratories with Freedom’s “Record Image Capture And Retrieval” (RICAR) System. The first document scanned into the RICAR system was a laboratory requisition. Laboratory requisitions were ideal for the automatic indexing of documents during the scanning process since laboratories were early adopters of using barcode to identify accession numbers on their requisition documents and specimens.

In 1998, Freedom officially changed its name to Freedom Imaging Systems, Inc. (Freedom), thereby representing the purpose of our company. More recently, in January 2006, Freedom was acquired from its parent company, 2020 Communications (formerly known as Ann Arbor Wireless), by two of Freedom’s long-term executives creating a leaner and more flexible organization that strictly focuses document management and markets within the healthcare vertical and more specifically with assisting clinical laboratories digitize their documents. It continues to be a privately-held corporation.

Since the acquisition in 2006, Freedom has focused on research and development for enhancing and improving our software suite of products. Eliminating the bureaucracy of a several-tiered organization, Freedom quickly began a restructuring of the organization that included adding in a new and younger generation of programmers that brought new and fresh approach to our software design and appearance.

Although RICAR was deploying a mature V.5.x release candidate, considerable modifications to the graphical user interface (GUI) was released in 2007 introducing RICAR’s new V.6 release candidate called “Accent” giving the software a fresher, 21st century look and experience. Designs for the V.7 release are “on paper” and Freedom projects RICAR’s 4D (Fourth Dimension) version will be available in the near future.

Freedom maintains its administrative and technical service offices near Ann Arbor, Michigan which is forty miles west of Detroit and located in the southeast corner of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

Who we are today
At present, Freedom successfully maintains imaging systems in over fifty healthcare and other environments nation-wide (and Guam) that collectively scanned over 250,000,000 documents annually. Everyday another 700,000+ files are archived into the RICAR system by our customers. Freedom proudly states that we have never failed in any project or installation in our thirteen-year document management history nor has our system been held responsible for the loss of any file.

Of significance to the success of Freedom, is the history of the RICAR System itself. Beginning with simple scanned document image capture and indexing of TIFF files in 1995, the software suite has evolved over the last decade to include the support of any file format through multiple capture technologies including scanning, importing, faxing and print stream. Additionally, the RICAR software suite supports a robust Computer Output to Laser Disc (COLD) solution, also labeled Enterprise Report Management (ERM) throughout the content management industry and a dynamic Workflow module allowing flexible rules and roles based business process management for any captured image.

Over the last several years, Freedom’s corporate direction has intentionally focused on the regulatory requirements mandating document retention and security based on HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory mandates. As a result of this focus, Freedom is currently offering an economical and proven solution that meets and exceeds the requirements of providing document management services for the regulatory compliance process. The additional benefits of our system’s retrieval functions are evident in the history of improved productivity and enhanced processes at our clients’ locations now utilizing our system.  Our stateless and N-tier architecture has allowed us to keep pace with advancing technology in a timely and efficient manner.

Although our focus is primarily on healthcare content, our system also includes functionality that can be applied to allow individual departmentalization of our system for use in areas such as Human Resources, Legal, Accounts Payable/Receivable or any other department or individual that would benefit from going paperless.

One of the most recent successful software modules has been our Business Process Management and Workflow software. Simply called Workflow in RICAR’s V.5 release; it now carries a new name in RICAR’s Accent release of FreeWf. FreeWf allows the automation of human interaction once documents have been captured in the content management repository. Repetitive manual tasks can be automated, prioritized and routed to knowledge workers in FreeWf, while acquired content can be merged and outputted to disparate systems. FreeWf eliminates the inefficiency, expense and risk of a paper environment in which documents are handled sequentially and can be easily misplaced or lost.

Every system installed by Freedom for its clients, from a performance perspective, are still proving to be stable and scalable. Our first document management installation in 1995 continues to provide the same split-second file retrieval as it did the day it was installed – with millions and millions of database records and files. Our service department is, and has been, available on a 24/7 basis for all customers utilizing our system. During our latest customer poll, sites utilizing our software and service rated us 4.4 on a 1-5 scale.

We appreciate you taking time to look around our website. If you are interested in discussing your document management issues with us, just give us a call (734-327-5600) or send us an email (contact@freeimage.com) or fill out the Demo Request form here on our website.

One of our Solution Specialist would be happy to provide you additional information about our system and pricing. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks again,

The Freedom team