I think that in the next 3 years there will be no more desktop DICOM viewers being released, there will also be no more active-x PACS solutions.
I came across 2 interesting Google blog posts on the Google Chromium blog.
http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/chrome-web-store.html
http://blog.chromium.org/2010/05/sneak-peek-at-native-client-sdk.html
These 2 blog posts hint at Chrome being the future platform of the web. With the web store, web applications can be installed on a client computer and given elevated privileges. Couple this with the Native Client SDK the possibility of creating C/C++ applications that interact with the web provides some exciting possibilities.
I predict that if this technology is widely adopted by the community of internet users, it will soon find its way to Radiology! Just imagine being able to run your PACS application on Windows, MAC, Linux or Chrome OS without any hassles. Imagine the cost savings and security benefits of being able to deploy Chrome OS Net Top desktops to radiologists and having referring physicians using Google Chrome OS net books or any other system running Chromium!
In the video above they demo some basic windowing capabilities that could be used for Radiology. Also with the wealth of C/C++ DICOM libraries out there I am sure that a Chrome Native Client DICOM viewer will appear pretty soon.
