The West African Health Informatics Team (WAHIT) will support countries with the required technical, engineering, application development, and operational support required to develop, manage, optimize, and maintain the various data systems used and adopted at the national level in the health sector - with a special focus on platform maintenance and improvements on community health and disease surveillance systems.
The Technical Team Lead will supervise a team of 3-4 software developers/business analyst to support WAHO to provide immediate digital health engineering assistance to the MoHs in the Ebola-affected countries.
Under the guidance of the Palladium’s WAHIT Technical Lead and WAHO’s HIS Specialist, the Technical Team Lead will be responsible for:
1 Establishing standard operating procedures for providing support to national Ministries of Health,
2 Providing technical support for national HIS projects based on criteria agreed upon by WAHO and USAID, and
3 Documenting and establishing best practices for regional digital health support to Ministries of Health.
In addition to direct technical assistance provided to MoHs in Ebola-affected countries, the team will conduct a viability assessment to inform the business case for whether a fuller and sustained regional West African Health Informatics Team should be launched with longer-term support for recruitment and training. If so, the assessment will also identify significant factors influencing program success and recommendations for implementation and sustainability.
Team Leadership (30%):
* Provide input on strategic direction and vision of the WAHIT including the hiring of other WAHIT members, in collaboration with WAHO, USAID and Palladium.
* Provide daily management of the WAHIT.
* Oversee program implementation, including the identification of key challenges and work with WAHO, USAID and Palladium to identify solutions.
* Act as the daily point of contact for HIS points of contact in MoHs; maintain good relationships and be responsive to their priorities and needs.
* Mentor, coach and train local (West African) experts who can provide HIS technical assistance to West African governments.
* Facilitate meetings with HIS, eHealth, and mHealth project stakeholders to elicit systems requirements.
Technical Assistance (70%):
* Assess and document technical and capacity needs of HIS software platforms in West Africa, evaluate demand for and delivery of digital support to national Ministries of Health.
* Analyze, develop, and manage detailed requirements documentation.
* Perform business process analysis and develop technical business process models.
* Develop lifecycle documents, including Use Cases, Detailed Functional Requirements, Software Requirement Specifications, Detailed Design Specifications, Test Scenarios, and User Manual.
* Conduct onsite assessments and reviews of developer plans as a software development plan, configuration management plan, or quality assurance plan with milestones reviews and test readiness reviews.
* Represent WAHIT at national, regional and international meetings, workshops and conferences as needed.
* Champion and promote the Principles for Digital Development (endorsed by USAID and more than fifty international partners) at the regional and national levels
* Master’s degree in Engineering and at least eight years professional experience in health informatics or related field. This should include at least five years specialized experience with software development, including business analysis and requirements engineering.
* At least two years of experience managing a team.
* Articulate, professionally and able to communicate in a clear, positive manner with clients and staff.
* Ability to read, write and speak fluent English, with professional level knowledge of one other ECOWAS language (French or Portuguese).
* Experience working in West Africa.
* Ability to work in a dynamic and agile environment with changing requirements and priorities.
* Ability to take direction to iteratively define and implement solution as requirements are being identified and finalized.
* Hands-on knowledge of Python, Java, Xforms, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), and Clojure.
* Experience in reverse engineering and creating requirements documents for an existing system (as is scenario) by reviewing any type of software code.
* Demonstrated ability to work effectively with team members and clients of different cultures, gender, and hierarchical levels.
* Experience working with national governments in Africa. Experience in public health in West Africa will be considered an asset.
* Willingness to travel at least 50% of the time to countries within West Africa to provide technical assistance as required.
Desired Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Competencies:
* Experience with Health IT, specifically Health Information Exchange and interoperability standards (e.g., IHE, HL7, OASIS, X12).
* Experience with open source and enterprise database solutions such as DHIS2, iHRIS, OpenMRS, CommCare, OpenLMIS, RapidPro, MySQL, Oracle.
* Experience with distributed version control systems, specifically Git and GitHub.
* Demonstrated knowledge on the context of HIS in West Africa, with a focus on priorities and challenges.
* French fluency
Palladium develops and delivers solutions that create positive impact for communities, businesses, societies and economies. We transform lives and create enduring value by working with governments, corporations and non-profit organisations.
Palladium is built on the idea that progress will be supported by four key pillars:
We create positive impact through more than 100 current projects with more than 2,000 employees operating in over 90 countries.
