Professor Nuala Healy is a consultant radiologist specialising in breast and oncology imaging. She is Chair of Radiology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin.
She completed her undergraduate medical training at the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2006. After two years of basic surgical training, she undertook an MD on microRNA expression as biomarkers for breast cancer, partly at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA. During this time, she also completed a Masters in Clinical Education at NUI Galway.
In 2012, she began radiology training at St James’ Hospital, Dublin, followed by a Breast Imaging fellowship at the Mater Hospital in 2016. In 2017, she joined the Cambridge Breast Unit, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, UK, as a clinical fellow, and was appointed consultant breast and oncology radiologist in 2018.
Professor Healy has a strong research profile, with national and international presentations and multiple peer-reviewed publications. She is research lead for the British Society of Breast Radiology (BSBR) and has chaired the Cambridge Conference on Breast Cancer Imaging twice. She is a trustee and organising committee member of Symposium Mammographicum, a member of the European Congress of Radiology breast subcommittee, and serves on the scientific subcommittee of the European Society of Breast Imaging. She is breast section editor for Cancer Imaging and on the editorial board of Insights into Imaging. She has also served on the NICE committee for breast cancer guideline updates (NG101 & NG81).
Her interests include artificial intelligence in radiology, particularly for early breast cancer diagnosis, risk prediction, and recurrence detection. She also explores AI for fracture detection in emergency care, and advanced imaging techniques such as contrast-enhanced mammography and abbreviated MRI.