It's that time again, where we at pute take a long, hard look at the data to see what trends can be seen. The trends from our previous analysis continued, although the strength of the trends were slightly different than expected.

• Database growth, on average, slowed slightly. However, since January 2008 the average monthly growth rate has not varied by more than 43MB's per month. The slight drop may be attributable to a decline in business due to economic factors. Additionally, as more clinics implement newer practice management software versions, these newer versions are more efficient in the way they store data, thereby causing the database to grow more slowly.
• Image growth continues to outpace database growth. In addition to growing more quickly, the   rate of growth continues to increase on a monthly average. Currently image growth averages slightly over 2GB's of data per month. One factor is the move to paperless record keeping, thereby requiring paper records and documents be scanned into the practice management software. Another contributor is the move away from traditional x-ray film and towards digital radiography; this is further exacerbated by imaging software that uses the DICOM protocol, as the dcm format is significantly larger than traditional jpg.