This position is supported by the Global Fund’s 2024–2026 Digital Health Impact Accelerator Strategic Initiative (DHIA SI), which aims to accelerate digital transformation of health systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative focuses on strengthening interoperability for integrated, patient-centered data exchange, while building national capacity, supporting digital health architecture and strategy, and ensuring sustainability and measurable impact.

Under this initiative, JSI is providing technical assistance to the Ethiopia Ministry of Health to design, pilot, and institutionalize a National Digital Health Interoperability Highway. The project will assess current gaps, benchmark global best practices, develop a national interoperability blueprint, test priority use cases in a controlled environment, and develop 5-year implementation and 10-year and investment plans, while building lasting national capacity to govern and sustain interoperability.

Duty Station: Addis Ababa, Ministry of Health (MoH) Office
Employment Type: Full-time, Embedded TA
Reporting Lines: Senior Digital Health Specialist and Interoperability Lead (JSI); Digital Health Lead Executive Office (MOH)

The Senior Digital Health Specialist, embedded at the Ministry of Health, will provide hands-on technical assistance. This support will focus on planning, designing, developing, maintaining, and building the skills needed for Ethiopia's National Digital Health Interoperability Highway. This role is key to making interoperability a standard practice within the Ministry of Health. The position holder will collaborate daily with technical leaders and experts to turn global best practices into solutions that Ethiopia can own, implement, and sustain. The position highlights strengthening governance, assessing feasibility, co-creating blueprints, overseeing pilots, and ensuring long-term skill transfer.

Key Responsibilities

Interoperability Governance & Institutional Capacity

• Provide day-to-day technical advisory support to the MoH Digital Health Lead Executive Office on the interoperability initiatives.

• Strengthen MoH leadership and governance structures for national interoperability, including roles, responsibilities, SOPs, and compliance mechanisms.

• Support operationalization of the National Digital Health Interoperability Framework and alignment with Enterprise Architecture and Digital Health Quality Assurance efforts.

• Facilitate multi-stakeholder coordination across MoH directorates, implementing partners, and other government entities in materialization of the Interoperability Highway.

Current State Analysis & Feasibility Assessment

• Support and coordinate the current interoperability landscape assessment, including OpenHIM, registries, APIs, standards, and existing integrations.

• Support assessing global models (e.g., X-Road and ADM) for an aspired Interoperability Highway.

• Co-lead national feasibility and requirements workshops and consolidate findings into actionable reports.

• Ensure national priorities, constraints, and institutional realities are reflected in the Interoperability Highway design decisions.

Interoperability Highway Blueprint Design & Validation Support

• Work closely with architects and developers to co-design the Interoperability Highway Blueprint with MoH ownership.

• Ensure the Interoperability Highway blueprint reflects DPI-for-Health shared services; secure national data exchange layer; standards-based APIs and registries; and governance, policy, and sustainability requirements. 

• Validate that designs are practical, phased, and implementable within Ethiopia’s context.

Implementation Planning & Investment Case

• Support development of a 5-year phased implementation roadmap aligned with national strategies and investment plans.

• Contribute to the 10-year investment case, ensuring assumptions reflect realistic operational and financial contexts.

• Support MoH in prioritizing use cases, sequencing investments, and managing transition from pilot to scale.

Piloting Oversight & Learning

• Support MoH oversight of controlled pilots (e.g., MFR–DHIS2, eCHIS–DHIS2).

• Document lessons learned, risks, and mitigation strategies for national scale-up.

• Ensure pilots are used as capacity-building-by-doing opportunities for MoH teams.

Capacity Building & Knowledge Transfer

• Support and coordinate structured capacity building for MoH technical and leadership teams.

• Support delivery of:

  • Architecture and interoperability highway design mentorship. 

  • Governance and project management strengthening (e.g., COBIT/PMP exposure). 

• Ensure effective handover, documentation, and institutional memory.

Job Requirements

• MSc/BSc degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, or related field.

• Minimum 5 years of progressive experience in digital health, health information systems, or large-scale government IT initiatives.

• Demonstrated experience providing embedded technical assistance to government institutions.

• Demonstrated programming experience in software development, including:

  • Languages such as Java, JavaScript, or Python.

  • Experience with related frameworks like SpringBoot, Node.js, or Django.

  • Experience with databases such as Postgres, MySQL, or MongoDB.

• Strong understanding of:

  • National digital health governance principles. 

  • Health information exchange and interoperability concepts. 

  • Standards such as HL7 FHIR, OpenHIE, terminology services. 

• Proven ability to translate complex technical concepts into policy- and decision-ready guidance.

• Excellent facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Core Competencies

• Government advisory and institutional strengthening.

• Interoperability governance and coordination.

• Strategic analysis and synthesis.

• Capacity building and mentoring.

• Trust-building, and leadership.

JSI/WEI is a child-safe organization, and the safety and well-being of children is a priority of our organization. We have robust recruitment procedures to ensure that all staff are suited to work with the children served by our programs.

JSI/WEI is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer committed to workplace diversity. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all qualified applicants and employees without regard to age, race, color, national origin, ancestry, creed, religion, gender, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, sexual preference, genetic information, political affiliation, or protected veteran status in any employment decisions. M/F/V/D

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