Work ShiftVarious (United States of America)
Job Summary:The PACS Engineer within the Wellstar IT department is responsible for strategic planning, organization, and day to day technical aspects of the Wellstar PACS environment. This position requires extensive knowledge and advanced PACS expertise to support and promote the delivery of safe, reliable, and high-quality clinical technologies. This role requires in-depth knowledge of how Wellstar's PACS environment works and how it interacts with other applications to support clinicians' workflows in all areas where PACS is utilized. This position plays a key part in ensuring the stability and performance of the PACS environment and collaborates with clinical and technical teams to align PACS functionality with clinical operations and organizational goals.
Core Responsibilities and Essential Functions:PACS Design and Architecture:
- Design, implement, and optimize scalable PACS architectures that integrate with enterprise IT environments, including cloud-based and hybrid solutions.
- Ensure the PACS infrastructure is designed for high availability and fault tolerance to support hospital operations 24/7.
- Facilitate seamless integration with EHR, RIS, AI-driven diagnostic tools, and reporting systems using standardized protocols such as HL7 and DICOM.
- Enhance clinician workflows by designing user-centric PACS solutions that reduce inefficiencies and minimize image retrieval and load times.
- Develop strategies for load balancing, caching, and indexing to improve image retrieval speed and system responsiveness.
- System Maintenance:
- Maintain in-depth knowledge of all applications and infrastructure supporting medical imaging, including networks, firewalls, and backend systems.
- Manage the lifecycle of PACS applications, ensuring efficient operation, preemptively resolving issues, and maintaining availability to support clinical operations.
- Monitor application performance, troubleshoot issues, and coordinate with technical teams to implement solutions.
- Ensure compliance with healthcare regulations and organizational policies.
- Oversee proper functioning of DICOM modalities, image routing, and data storage solutions.
- Support HL7 messaging for efficient data exchange across systems.
- Collaboration & Communication:
- Collaborate with IT infrastructure teams, clinical application teams, PACS administrators, and other key stakeholders to maintain a healthy PACS environment that aligns with and supports clinical and operational objectives.
- Work closely with application vendors, maintain regular communication, understand their future direction, and communicate Wellstars needs.
- Works closely with the Manager of IT PACs imaging to ensure alignment and objectives are met.
- Share technical knowledge with other PACS team members and maintain detailed documentation of applications and configurations.
- Create and maintain playbooks for service desk use and outage scenarios.
- Risk Management:
- Identify and assess risks related to PACS performance, project delivery, and resource allocation.
- Develop and implement mitigation strategies to ensure PACS continuity.
- Develop and maintain contingency plans for PACS applications to handle unexpected issues or emergencies.
- Collaborate with Information Security to ensure all assets in the PACS environment are fully patched and comply with Wellstar security policies.
- Continuous Learning & Professional Development:
- Be curious and enhance your knowledge through technical training as well as soft skills
- Develop skills in enhancing usability of technical systems
- Stay informed on emerging trends, technologies and best practices in healthcare IT.
- Contribute to a culture of continuous learning by actively participating in training and development opportunities.
- Technical Support and Troubleshooting:
- Provide tier-2 and 3 technical support to PACS Analyst and IT staff for PACS-related issues.
- Troubleshoot and resolve hardware, software, and network problems, escalating to vendors when necessary.
- Perform root cause analysis for system errors and implement corrective actions.
- Assist in maintaining audit trails and system logs for regulatory reporting and incident investigation.
- Performance Monitoring and Reporting:
- Define and monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for application performance.
- Prepare and present regular reports on application usage, performance metrics, to leadership and stakeholders.
- Utilize data to identify trends, optimize application performance, and drive continuous improvement initiatives.
- Performs other duties as assigned
- Complies with all Wellstar Health System policies, standards of work, and code of conduct.
Required Minimum Education:- or Bachelors Information Technology or Bachelors Computer Applications or Bachelors Biomedical Engineering
Required Minimum License(s) and Certification(s):All certifications are required upon hire unless otherwise stated.
Preferred:- Advanced, hands-on experience administering, configuring, and supporting Sectra PACS / enterprise imaging
- Hands-on experience with PACS solutions, with demonstrated Sectra proficiency (experience with additional platforms such as GE, Philips, Agfa, or Fujifilm is a plus)
- Sectra certification or completion of Sectra administrator / engineer training - Preferred
Additional License(s) and Certification(s):CIIP (Certified Imaging Informatics Professional) within 90 Days Required or
PARCA (PACS Administrators Registry and Certification Association) within 90 Days Required or
