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Hospital budgets today are under siege. Reimbursement cuts and governmental subsidies, often in the millions of dollars, are tightening the purses of hospital administrators across the country — an even tougher pill to swallow as the cost of care and medical professionals' salaries continue to grow.

Despite these constrained budgets, we've found that most hospitals still purchase and maintain expensive on-site, name-brand, picture archiving and communications systems (PACS). Contrary to their budgetary realities, hospital staff aren't seeking out perfectly viable alternatives and considering new opportunities to save substantial amounts of expense on their PACS medical imaging solutions.

So why are hospitals ignoring these expense-saving PACS options, and how can they break out of this line of thinking?

The field of teleradiology — in which radiologists view and interpret medical images in a geography that is separate from the scan location — has grown rapidly in recent years, with profound impacts on the medical industry. As in so many other cases, technology is able to connect specialized resources separated by geographic distance in pursuit of a common goal - patient diagnosis and treatment.

Horos, a free open-source DICOM medical imaging viewer for Apple computers, has been adopted globally by tens of thousands of diverse users, from clinicians and academic researchers to lawyers and patients who want to view their medical images.

As such, after downloading Horos the next steps you should take depend on the reasons you downloaded the software in the first place.

So what are the most common use cases for Horos, and what should you do in each instance?

Physicians need access to the highest-quality and most up-to-date information in order to make the best decisions for their patients. However, patient data is often spread across multiple platforms that don't always play nicely with each other. Electronic health record (EHR) systems store textual information like patient visit notes and test results. Separately, picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) provide storage and access to medical images.

Radiologic technologists, or "rad techs" as they are often called, play a key role in the medical imaging supply chain, and they are often the people within the practice who take a hands-on, active role with the technology. They're also responsible for making sure medical imaging is of a high quality, and that it arrives in the correct hands. Recent technology advancements have improved their ability to share medical imaging electronically, greatly improving their workflow.

So how has this process improved and how are radiologic technologists taking advantage of electronic image sharing?