One of the unavoidable side effects of the shift to Electronic Medical Records (EMR) has been a nearly exponential surge in the amount of digital data storage being occupied by the healthcare industry, which some are referring to as the “data deluge.” In all honesty, this data flood of epic proportions is something that everyone really should have seen coming a long time ago. It’s been pretty obvious for quite some time. For a number of years already, in fact, medical-related data has been consuming increasingly bigger pieces of the global storage pie.

With just under a month until the ICD-10 deadline on October 1, specialty physicians are doing what they can to ensure their practices are prepared for massive transition.

Medical practices aren't the only organizations preparing for the major ICD-10 transition set to take place on October 1. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services conducted its third end-to-end test of the year in regard to preparing for ICD-10 claims. The results? A huge success.

Nextech's National User Conference, EDGE, was a huge success last February as Nextech and MDIntelleSys clients from all over the country decended upon Walt Disney World for three days. Building upon the success of EDGE 2015, Nextech is thrilled to announce EDGE 2016 is officially set to take place Feb. 25-27, 2016 and that Early Bird registration for the conference is now live! If you didn't attend last year's conference, we know you're probably kicking yourself for missing out on the best meeting of the year! Still need some more convincing? Here are three reasons why you should attend EDGE 2016:

In the second quarter of 2015, wearables tech company Fitbit saw its sales revenue more than triple to $400 million, up from $113 million in the same quarter last year. This upward trend in the wearables market isn’t just being seen by Fitbit, either. While they definitely seem to be leading the pack, many other tech companies have introduced their own wearable devices in recent years, usually in the form of wristbands that track a wearer’s stats/behavior for things such as heart rate, step counts, calorie intake/burn, and even sleeping habits—Apple Watch, the Nike+ FuelBand (though this device discontinued last year as part of a new fitness-wearable joint venture between Nike and Apple), MiBand, and Jawbone, to name just a few.

This has already been a wild year when it comes to data breaches, beginning with the hack of insurance giant Anthem back in February that compromised the personal data of 80 million clients. A month later, 11 million customers had their medical and financial details compromised in a cyberattack on Premera Blue Cross. Since then, things have only gotten worse.

Originally discussed in President Obama’s State of the Union speech back in January, the White House is now looking for the help of those in the medical industry to ensure the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) is a success. In the official blog of the Executive Branch, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist in the Office of Science and Technology Policy DJ Patil and PMI Project Manager Stephanie Devaney asked for the feedback of both the public and private sectors.

The world is more mobile than ever before and it now appears a greater number of physicians are doing the same in throughout the workday According to a new survey conducted by Black Book Market Research, 52 of ambulatory practice physicians currently access patient records or reference data from a mobile device. But the use of mobile devices doesn't stop there for ambulatory physicians.