Expert-consult radiology support for the UAE — your licensed radiologist always signs

How the backend model works

The DHA Standards for Telehealth Services (Version 4, DHA/HRS/HPSD/ST-14, effective 26 November 2025) describe, in Appendix 2 scenario 8, a physician within DHA jurisdiction using telehealth to consult an expert physician outside DHA jurisdiction in the same medical field — the requesting physician holds the DHA licence and the expert complies with their own regulatory authority’s requirements. That physician-to-physician expert consultation is precisely the structure 5C Network uses, and Version 4 now also defines teleradiology within its telediagnostics requirements as the electronic transmission of radiological images for interpretation by qualified radiologists, with secure transmission and storage under UAE federal and local law. Your UAE-licensed radiologist requests the expert input; 5C returns a structured preliminary read produced by an NMC-registered specialist with AI-assisted workflow and QC underneath; your radiologist reviews, amends where needed, and issues the final report under their own licence. 5C does not hold itself out to UAE patients and does not issue final reports in the UAE.

1. 1

   Hosting is configured for the UAE’s residency rules first — in-country hosting where Federal Law No. 2 of 2019, Ministerial Resolution 51/2021 or (in Abu Dhabi) ADHICS requires it — with the applicable instrument confirmed and documented before integration begins.

2. 2

   Your PACS connects to 5C over a secure DICOM integration — typically live within 72 hours.

3. 3

   Studies your UAE-licensed radiologists route for expert input are triaged by AI-driven workflow orchestration, with urgent cases prioritized automatically.

4. 4

   An NMC-registered Indian specialist produces a structured preliminary read for each study, which passes through 5C’s automated QC pipeline before release — your clinician never receives raw AI output.

5. 5

   Your DHA, DoH or MOHAP-licensed radiologist reviews the expert-reviewed draft, finalizes their interpretation, and issues and signs the report under their own licence.

Three authorities, one facility: DHA, DoH and MOHAP

Healthcare licensing in the UAE is emirate-specific. The Dubai Health Authority licenses and regulates facilities and professionals in the Emirate of Dubai under Local Law No. 6 of 2018 concerning the DHA, as amended by Law No. 14 of 2021 — the mandate DHA’s own Standards for Interoperability and Data Exchange (2025) recite; the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi does the same for Abu Dhabi and Al Ain; and the federal Ministry of Health and Prevention licenses practitioners in the Northern Emirates.

For a backend engagement the consequence is practical: the radiologist who signs must hold an active licence from the authority that licenses your facility, and the telehealth instrument that frames the engagement follows the same line. In Dubai that is the DHA Standards for Telehealth Services Version 4 and its Appendix 2 scenario 8 physician-to-expert consultation; in Abu Dhabi it is DoH’s requirements, including the ADHICS rule that patient health information is hosted on servers inside the UAE; in the Northern Emirates it is MOHAP’s federal framework under Federal Law No. 2 of 2019 and Ministerial Resolution 51 of 2021.

A group with facilities in more than one emirate therefore runs more than one licensing and hosting map, and 5C Network scopes each facility separately: the signing radiologist’s licence, the applicable telehealth instrument and the hosting configuration are documented per site before integration, rather than assumed from the emirate where the group is headquartered.

Night and Ramadan-hour cover

The time-zone arithmetic is worth stating precisely because it is unusual: the UAE (UTC+4) is only 1.5 hours behind India (UTC+5:30), so India’s daytime does not map onto UAE nights — 22:00 in Dubai is 23:30 in Bengaluru. The night cover comes from scale instead: 5C Network handles 15,000+ studies a day for 2,000+ hospitals and diagnostic centres in India on a staffed 24/7 roster, so a UAE facility’s night queue is read by a network that is already awake, not by an on-call individual.

Where the offset does help is the morning. India’s working day begins at 06:30 UAE time, so studies acquired overnight in the Emirates are already in front of an NMC-registered specialist before an 08:00 radiologist arrives, and on 5C Network’s platform a routine CT returns in about 20 minutes and a routine MRI in about 24 minutes, so the expert-reviewed drafts are waiting at the start of the shift.

Ramadan compresses the working day rather than the imaging demand. The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation reduces private-sector working hours by two hours a day for the month, as Gulf News reported of the March 2024 circular, and facilities that move outpatient imaging into post-iftar evening sessions — 21:00 to 01:00 in the UAE is 22:30 to 02:30 in India — land on 5C Network’s night roster, with emergency reads in 15 minutes and the same QC pipeline as the daytime queue.

Data protection & compliance

Where local rules require health data to stay in-country — as UAE federal law does — 5C deploys with in-country hosting, with expert consultation performed against locally resident data; the engineering capability is already built, not a roadmap item. The instruments themselves: Federal Law No. 2 of 2019 (Article 13) restricts transferring health data outside the UAE, Ministerial Resolution 51 of 2021 defines exception categories — including telemedicine and diagnostic-testing scenarios — under which transfer or external storage may be permitted with conditions, and Abu Dhabi’s ADHICS standard requires patient health information hosted on servers inside the UAE. The applicable instrument or exception is confirmed with your compliance team per engagement and documented before any study moves. 5C’s security and privacy management is certified to ISO 27001 and ISO 27701.

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