Teleradiology (Fig. 2). DICOM currently contains no provisions for security or encryption, so DICOM transfers over the Internet contain individually identifiable data (including names and medical record numbers) in readable text form. Security features cannot usually be added to vendor-supplied teleradiology systems. This dilemma can be solved by installing a relatively inexpensive PC on the local network at each end of the teleradiology connection and running NetRelay on both PCs.

Remote access to patient data (Fig. 3). A Internet-compatible terminal or browsing program is often used to access patient data remotely from a central server. If this occurs over the public Internet, user passwords and patient data are potentially exposed to intruders. A solution to this problem is to install NetRelay on the remote computer and on a small PC near the central server.

Rerouting (Fig. 4). With encryption turned off, NetRelay can be used to reroute a network connection from one computer to another. For example, images from a scanner can be routed to the workstation most convenient for the radiologist (perhaps in an on-call situation).