Horos is being used in 160 countries. That’s pretty awesome. With over 100,000 users worldwide, we have countless professionals using Horos in their everyday lives. Germany happens to be such a place. It’s the land of great beer, beautiful Bavarian castles, and misty clouds nestled in the Alps. But enough of that – want to hear a cool German healthcare fact?…
Germany is home to the oldest national social health insurance system. The country also has the most dentists per nation in all of Europe. However, our spotlight today is not on German dentists – it’s on the field of orthopedics, a regulated workforce – which is considered the norm in Germany. It’s based off a simple physician to patient ratio. While it may seem a little foreign to those not living in Germany, there is a great deal of research that has been put into this decision. Germany utilizes geographic information systems to determine the present state of supply and demand. With this technology, surveyors can determine how many orthopedics to allocate to any given region. For instance, highly urbanized areas require more orthopedic specialists compared to regions that are not densely populated.
Orthopedics of Germany
Orthopedic specialists around the world use Horos to study orthopedic diseases. Some of the more awesome projects our friends in Germany have worked on, with the help of Horos, include diving deep into osteochondritis of the knee and analyzing the healing process. With the global population growing exponentially, and the number of baby boomers surpassing what anyone would have thought, there is a tremendous need for research like this. It’s applicable to residents of any nation. These specialists view MRIs, CTs, PETs, and X-rays on Horos to determine what stage the bone disease is in, and whether or not surgery is a viable option. Additionally, features on Horos enable them to measure distances between various anatomical points in a research setting.
Horos is a Researcher’s Haven
Now, you might have more in common than you thought with our German friends. In fact, they too once were avid OsiriXTM users. However, in recent years, since OsiriX has made the decision to move away from open source and towards commercialization it became more apparent that there were some glitches. One of which was the ease of use with WIFI. Many laboratories do not have strong WIFI connections. This makes it incredibly difficult and frustrating having to use a desktop viewer that is not equipped to work without such a connection.
Of course, anyone can purchase the OsiriX license, however, for professionals that require the software only for scientific analysis and not for making a medical diagnosis; they lose if they purchase a license. After all, there are many DICOM viewers out there that charge an arm and a leg for a subscription. Not to mention if you want to get the premium add on for support and help documentation, you have to pay for that as well. So that’s anywhere from hundreds to thousands of US dollars... for one subscription. While many labs require more than one, this becomes a very expensive investment.
Final Thought
Horos is different. It’s free, it doesn’t have ads, and it doesn’t insist on a WIFI connection for you to do what you need to do. When we asked one of our German Orthopedic Specialists what value Horos has brought to them, they simply said that Horos provides a “clear comparable picture analysis, with easy and safe handling of picture data at any location, (even without WIFI)”.
