Lead Imaging Consultant

Role Overview

Lead Imaging Consultant at American Hospital Dubai. The role promotes the hospital's mission and philosophy by providing expert technical leadership, consultation, and support for clinical imaging systems in a caring, courteous, and confidential manner toward patients, visitors, colleagues, and staff.

Role Purpose

To lead the technical administration, optimization, and governance of enterprise imaging platforms and clinical imaging applications; ensure safe, efficient, and reliable imaging workflows; oversee integration and interoperability across modalities and clinical systems; and provide senior technical expertise to IT leadership and clinical stakeholders on imaging technology strategy, design, and investment.

Key Responsibilities

Imaging Systems Leadership and Governance

• Lead technical administration, configuration, integration, maintenance, and optimization of PACS, RIS, VNA, enterprise viewers, image exchange platforms, voice recognition solutions, advanced visualization tools, and other clinical imaging applications.
• Establish imaging system standards, operating procedures, governance controls, service expectations, and technology roadmaps in alignment with clinical priorities, enterprise architecture, and organizational strategy.
• Serve as senior technical and functional subject matter expert for clinical imaging systems, advising IT leadership and clinical stakeholders on platform capability, system design, integration, optimization, and technology investment.
• Coordinate imaging applications support function, provide technical direction to analysts and vendors, and ensure issues are appropriately prioritized, investigated, escalated, and resolved.

Clinical Workflow and Systems Optimization

• Analyze end-to-end imaging workflows from order entry and patient scheduling through modality acquisition, image interpretation, reporting, distribution, archiving, and clinical review.
• Collaborate with radiologists, cardiologists, technologists, nurses, physicians, and operational leaders to translate clinical requirements into safe, standardized, and efficient system workflows.
• Lead optimization initiatives addressing modality worklists, patient and study reconciliation, hanging protocols, report distribution, critical-results communication, image availability, turnaround time, and diagnostic user experience.
• Evaluate system enhancement requests, identify workflow risks and dependencies, and recommend solutions that improve patient safety, clinical productivity, service quality, and operational performance.

Integration and Interoperability

• Oversee DICOM, HL7, FHIR, IHE, and API-based integration between imaging platforms, modalities, the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), clinical systems, reporting solutions, patient portals, and external health information exchanges.
• Coordinate onboarding, testing, validation, and production deployment of imaging modalities and systems, ensuring correct patient identification, order matching, data exchange, image routing, and clinical availability.
• Manage imaging data migration, consolidation, lifecycle management, and archive strategies while ensuring data integrity, accessibility, retention, and continuity of historical patient information.
• Support secure exchange of imaging records with external providers and regulatory platforms, including applicable NABIDH integration and organizational interoperability requirements.
• Ensure all clinical systems training aligns with JCI standards, International Patient Safety Goals (IPSG), DHA regulations, and hospital policies.

Implementation, Testing, and Change Management

• Lead imaging technology projects including new implementations, upgrades, migrations, integrations, replacements, expansions, and activation of new clinical locations or imaging services.
• Develop functional and technical requirements, implementation plans, risk assessments, test scripts, validation criteria, cutover plans, downtime procedures, and post-go-live support arrangements.
• Coordinate unit, integration, regression, performance, and user acceptance testing, ensuring clinical workflows and patient safety requirements are validated before production deployment.
• Maintain controlled change-management processes and ensure all configuration changes, releases, interfaces, and system enhancements are appropriately reviewed, approved, documented, tested, and communicated.

Service Reliability and Technical Support

• Monitor system availability, interface performance, storage capacity, image-routing queues, application performance, database health, and service trends to maintain reliable 24/7 imaging operations.
• Lead investigation and resolution of complex incidents involving missing images, mismatched studies, patient identity errors, failed interfaces, modality connectivity, reporting interruptions, archive retrieval, and application performance.
• Coordinate with infrastructure, database, networking, cybersecurity, Biomedical Engineering, vendors, and clinical teams during critical incidents, planned maintenance, downtime, and system recovery.
• Maintain support escalation procedures, knowledge resources, service documentation, and on-call readiness to minimize disruption to diagnostic and clinical services.

Data Security, Compliance, and Business Continuity

• Collaborate with Information Security to manage access controls, privileged accounts, audit logs, vulnerability remediation, secure image exchange, encryption, third-party access, and cybersecurity risks affecting connected imaging systems and modalities.
• Develop, test, and maintain imaging-system business continuity, disaster recovery, downtime, backup, restoration, and high-availability procedures in coordination with infrastructure and clinical stakeholders.
• Support accreditation surveys, regulatory inspections, internal audits, risk assessments, and corrective action plans related to clinical imaging technology, information management, and patient safety.

Vendor, Asset, and Financial Coordination

• Manage technical relationships with imaging-system vendors, service providers, modality suppliers, and implementation partners, ensuring contractual obligations, support services, response times, and deliverables are achieved.
• Contribute to business cases, technical evaluations, requests for proposal, vendor selection, contract reviews, capital expenditure planning, licensing forecasts, storage projections, and total-cost-of-ownership assessments.
• Maintain accurate inventory of imaging applications, interfaces, licenses, devices, software versions, dependencies, support agreements, certificates, and planned lifecycle replacements.
• Review vendor performance, recurring incidents, system utilization, licensing, maintenance costs, and improvement opportunities to support responsible technology investment.

Performance Monitoring and Continuous Improvement

• Establish and monitor imaging technology performance indicators covering availability, incident response, interface reliability, image accessibility, report turnaround support, storage utilization, user satisfaction, project delivery, and system optimization.
• Analyze service data, user feedback, recurring incidents, workflow delays, capacity trends, and audit findings to identify and implement sustainable improvements.
• Prepare operational reports, project updates, risk summaries, technology recommendations, and performance dashboards for IT and clinical leadership.
• Participate in clinical informatics governance, imaging committees, digital transformation initiatives, quality improvement programs, and other organizational projects as assigned.

Qualifications & Experience

Education

• Bachelor's Degree in Health Informatics, Medical Imaging, Radiologic Technology, Computer Science, Information Technology, Biomedical Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Master's Degree in Health Informatics, Information Systems, Healthcare Administration, Digital Health, or a related field (preferred).

Professional Experience

• Minimum of five (5) years of progressive experience in imaging informatics, PACS/RIS administration, clinical systems, healthcare information technology, or a related field.
• Minimum of two (2) years in a senior imaging systems, lead consultant, solution architect, PACS administrator, or equivalent role within a complex healthcare environment.
• Demonstrated experience implementing, integrating, upgrading, migrating, and supporting enterprise PACS, RIS, VNA, diagnostic viewing, and imaging workflow solutions.
• Experience supporting radiology and at least one additional imaging specialty such as cardiology, breast imaging, nuclear medicine, oncology, dental imaging, endoscopy, or digital pathology (preferred).
• Demonstrated experience with DICOM and HL7 integration, modality onboarding, image migration, workflow optimization, incident resolution, vendor management, and business continuity planning.
• Experience integrating imaging artificial intelligence or advanced clinical decision-support solutions (highly desirable).
• Experience within a tertiary, multi-site, or JCI-accredited hospital and familiarity with DHA and NABIDH requirements (preferred).
• Experience leading multidisciplinary projects and working directly with physicians, radiologists, technologists, executives, technical teams, and external vendors (required).

Skills & Competencies

Technical Knowledge

• Advanced knowledge of PACS, RIS, VNA, enterprise viewers, modality worklists, voice recognition, image exchange, advanced visualization, and imaging workflow.
• Strong knowledge of DICOM, HL7, FHIR, IHE Radiology integration profiles, healthcare interfaces, image lifecycle management, and clinical-system interoperability.
• Knowledge of imaging infrastructure, storage, virtualization, cloud architecture, networking, cybersecurity, disaster recovery, database concepts, and system monitoring.
• Strong understanding of radiology and other clinical imaging workflows, patient identity management, clinical documentation, privacy, patient safety, and regulatory requirements.

Certifications & Training

• Professional certification or formal training in PACS administration, imaging informatics, DICOM, HL7, healthcare integration, project management, cybersecurity, or relevant vendor technologies (preferred).
• Current or previous professional registration in Radiologic Technology or another clinical imaging discipline (advantageous).

Core Competencies

• Excellent leadership, consultation, analytical, troubleshooting, documentation, project management,