Health Information System Development and Data Analysis Advisor

Ministry of Health would like to invite competent applicants for the following positions. 

Background

The Seqota Declaration is the government of Ethiopia commitment to end stunting among children under two years by 2030. To attain this goal their Excellences at federal and regional level and inter-ministerial steering committee and regional cabinets has provided leadership and performance management in the past years. This has leverage the government commitment and allocation of funding for the Innovation Phase (2016-2020) which focuses on the implementation of priority high impact nutrition sensitive and nutrition specific and infrastructure interventions packages to generate learning and evidence that inform the design and implementation of the Expansion Phase (2021-2025).

The Seqota Declaration provided a high level coordination mechanism that seeks to mainstream and accelerates existing multi sector programs in Ethiopia. The SD goal of ending stunting under two years of children by 2030 is widely known and has been embraced by actors from diverse government sectors, development partners and religious leaders at different levels from federal to kebele level.

The Seqota Declaration is characterized by high level political commitment and ownership in to its day-to-day roll-out. In terms of the sectors participation, the level of engagement of the different sectors has been based on the existence of costed woreda based plan within the sectors and the availability of multi sectoral coordination staff through program Delivery Unit and focal points in the SD implementing sectors. The leadership provided by the inter-ministerial steering committee, regional, Zonal and woreda cabinet, government and development partners’ technical and financial contribution to finance the investment Plan in the past years has been the success factor for the innovation phase.

In August 2021, the government of Ethiopia has launched the Expansion Phase (2021-2025) to reach 240 stunting prevalent woredas. This will enable the regional governments and city administrations across the country to develop and implement the expansion phase through costed woreda based plan which will be financed by federal and regional governments. In this regard, the PDU will play a pivotal role in technical leadership and coordination of the Expansion Phase along the Food and Nutrition strategy implementation.

General Purpose of the Position

The Health Information System development and Data Analysis Advisor will be to support the scaling up of the best practices learned in the innovation phase to an additional 200 high-burden woredas across Ethiopia. It will also be responsible for assisting the MoH-HITD in the development (depending on the additional requirements), deployment and implementation of health information systems with a focus on the electronic Community Health Information System (e-CHIS). He/She will be responsible for the additional required system development (coding) deployment requirements, system administration and maintenance of the e-CHIS focusing on the nutrition module. He/She will be responsible for maintaining regular communications with SD expansion regions (11 regions and two city administration), zones (clusters) and woredas (240 selected woredas) to assist the implementation of e-CHIS mainly focusing on the individual child growth tracking (GMP) using the nutrition module of the platform. He/She will also be responsible to plan, coordinate, organize and deliver ToT trainings on e-CHIS for the SD woredas, develop and customize e-CHIS training modules to the SD context and monitor the day-to-day data captured with the e-CHIS GMP module. He/ she will be a member of relevant Technical Working Groups (TWGs) formed by MoH-HITD to improve the management of national health management information system, System development, administration and maintenance activities. He/She will work in close collaboration with other software development team members and Health Information System Officers MoH-HITD. This position requires critical thinking, troubleshooting and solving complex technical problem skills. He/she is also responsible for ensuring the smooth running of activities and compliance with MoH-HITD policies and regulations.

Scope of the Assignment

The Health Information System development and Data Analysis Advisor will be a staff member of the Ministry of Health -Health Information Technology Directorate (HITD) and will closely work Federal Program Delivery Unit (FPDU) and will report directly HITD Director and Senior Program Manager of the PDU. S/he will work collaboratively with other members of the HITD and PDU to ensure the coordinated development, administration and maintenance of e-CHIS -individual child growth tracking and all components of the GMP Plan. In addition, she/he will execute other duties assigned by the HITD director and Senior Program Manager of the PDU.

Main Job Duties and Responsibilities 

The Health Information System development and Data Analysis Advisor will be required to perform the following:

Develop, administrate and maintain the e-CHIS focusing on the individual child growth tracking (GMP) nutrition module of the system. The detail responsibilities are as follows:

• Work with the e-CHIS developers to understand system requirements, design, IT development tools and technologies so that He/She can extend the system development to address new additional requirements   
• Design, maintain, and deploy patches and modules for the e-CHIS to user’s additional needs.
• Efficiently execute the full lifecycle of software development including the deployment, administration and maintenance of the system
• Document and demonstrate solutions by developing documentation, flowcharts, layouts, diagrams, charts, code
• Write well designed, testable and efficient codes and integrate software components into a fully functional software system.
• Develop software verification plans and quality assurance procedures.
• Document code consistently throughout the development process by listing a description of the program, special instructions, and any changes made to the system.
• Respond promptly and professionally to bug reports.
• Prepare and deploy systems with the focus of e-CHIS and follow up the administration and maintenance of the system including the taking backups, monitor the deployment requirements and ensure the overall smooth operation of the systems

Develop detailed road map and programme monitoring plan for the implementation of e-CHIS as a main source of data for the individual child growth tracking program. The detail responsibilities are as follows:

•   Plan and Coordinate, organize e-CHIS ToTs and trainings (training proposals, invitations, venue for eCHIS))
• Facilitate coordinated engagement among PDUs, HITD, SD expansion regions, zones and woredas and other SD partners that are actively participating and supporting the implantation of the individual child growth tracking using e-CHIS
• Support implementation of appropriate strategies and tools developed at the national level for strengthening the use of GMP (on individual child base) data, identify data needs at SD expansion phase woredas , and build capacity to implement.
• Provide programmatic guidance and technical assistance to strengthen data quality, data demand and use at SD expansion regions, zones (clusters), woreda and Kebele/health facility levels.
• Facilitate Coordinated cross-sectoral training planning and participation on UNISE (Unified Nutrition Information System for Ethiopia)
• Facilitate the use of data through the application of innovative approaches at the national, regional, woreda, health facility, and community levels. Design Dashboard reports for all levels that show the individual child tracking of the GMP participation
• Triangulate the Individual domain GMP participation data to the cross-sectoral data from UNISE to ensure that the GMP acts as litmus-test for the cross-sectoral performance of nutrition
• Support the Triangle of Knowledge Partnership (ToKP) in providing ToTs, mentors and coaches the utilization of UNISE, Resource Tracking and Management System (RTMP) to the SD expansion phase woredas
• Build capacity on health information systems and HITs at different levels through strengthening mentorship, and organizing training and workshops.
• Monitor performances by organizing regular virtual and face to face meetings, organizing supervisions, reviewing reports and providing feedbacks. 
• Track performances, document, synthesize and disseminate lessons learned and success stories.
• Submit regular reports to the HITD director and Senior program Manager as per Government of Ethiopia standards;
• Have weekly briefing with the MEL team and monthly briefing meeting with the HITD and FPDU/RPDU team;
• Participate in planning and review meetings;
• Submit trip reports/progress updates to HITD director, senior program Manager and MEL Adviser.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Deliverables

The main deliverable from this position will be

• Fully operational e-CHIS on the focus of nutrition module at all household levels of the SD expansion phase woredas
• Leading the technical implementation of e-CHIS – system administration, maintenance, backups and maintaining redundancy 
• Create standard APIs to Triangulate the cross-sectoral performance data (UNISE/DHIS2) with the individual child growth tracking data (e-CHIS) and synthesize the trend of data.
• Generate timely reports and dashboards of the individual domain GMP participate and making sure that all SD expansion woredas, zones and regions utilize the data for making decisions
• Ensure the functionality and availability of the e-CHIS system for the GMP in the selected SD expansion woredas, kebeles and provide the required trainings, mentoring and coaching of users at all level
• Facilitate coordinated plan and execution of activities with the cross-sectoral data revolution activities
• Triangulate the cross-sectoral performance data (UNISE) with the individual child growth tracking data and synthesize the trend of data.
• e-CHIS implementation manuals, End-user guide documents, operating procedure documents, Best practice documents and lesson learned documents production
• Prepare appropriate reports to the HITD director, senior program manager of FPDU and MEL advisors
• Track performances, document, synthesize and disseminate lessons learned and success stories of the health and nutrition information systems.

Competencies

• Excellent management, supervision/mentoring and organizational skills including the ability to handle a variety of assignments sometimes under pressure of deadlines.
• A broad variety of IT and support management skills
• Be self-motivated, proactive, have a positive attitude & work with minimum supervision.
• Ability to communicate effectively, instilling trust and confidence.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Be of high integrity and have a sense of confidentiality.
• Language Requirement: Fluency in oral and written English and Amharic is required

Performance Evaluation

The Health and Nutrition program Advisor will develop and agree an annual work plan with the Senior Program Manager and other relevant departments or units at the beginning of the year. And the work of the Health and Nutrition program Advisor will be reviewed by the Senior Program Manager.

Reporting

• The Health Information System development and Data Analysis Advisor will report directly to HITD director, the Senior Program Manager in the delivery unit. In addition, s/he will execute other duties assigned by the HITD and FPDU senior program manager.

Project Title: Seqota Declaration Expansion Phase

Reports to: FPDU Senior Program manager, HITD Director

Duty station: MoH, HITD

Required no: 2 (Two)

Type & Duration of Position: The assignment will be for a period of 12 months’ contract with possibility of extension subject to performance up to the project period.

Academic Background, work Experience and skills

• Minimum of Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Health informatics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering. 
• At least 10 years for BSc Degree or 7 years MSc degree progressive experiences in the system development and implementation.
• Expertise and hands-on experiences with the following open-source systems: Comm Care, DHIS2, Open HIE, EMR and GIS platforms
• Expertise and hands-on experiences with database design, data model development, query languages
• Expertise and knowledges on Cloud native application and Microservices
• Experience of working with the government especially with FMoH is highly recommended;
• Experience working effectively with NGO and other partners;
• Good understanding on multi-sectoral nutrition;
• An understanding and commitment to Seqota Declaration Goal and Strategic Objectives and initiatives,
• Strong results orientation, proven ability to manage a complex and demanding workload;
• Excellent spoken and written English and Amharic;
• Demonstrated ability to handle detail-oriented tasks and be organized.
• Flexible and ability to work under pressure.

Required Technology Skills

• Application Layer /Programing languages: python, HTML, JavaScript, Java
• Database Layer: NoSQL DBs like CouchDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, and PostgreSQL
• Proxy Server/Webserver: Nginx, Apache Tomcat
• OS: Linux variants (Ubuntu)