Chief Informatics Officer

Zambia National Public Health Institute

Job Title: Chief Informatics Officer

Reports to: Director- Strategic Planning and Information Management

Location:  Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI)

Fixed-term Employment: Through August 31, 2026, with possibility of extension

The Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI) has the mandate to lead health security for the Republic of Zambia. Resolve to Save Lives, a US-based global public health organization, works closely with Ministries of Health and national public health institutes in Africa to strengthen epidemic preparedness capacity, accelerate disease detection and response, and use data effectively to inform action. ZNPHI is collaborating with Resolve to Save Lives on a new surveillance program to enhance disease and contextual/risk data through strengthened surveillance and innovations in epidemic intelligence, effective use of existing and emergent data throughout the event lifecycle, and development of data tools and products that support key decision-makers from communities, the health sector, and government bodies.

ZNPHI seeks to recruit a suitably qualified and experienced person to be appointed as Director, Strategic Planning and Information Management (SPIM) under this collaborative project.

Job Purpose:   

The Chief Informatics Officer will support SPIM by providing expertise in public health informatics, specifically in areas such as data architectures, processing, management, centralization, and integration. The officer will ensure alignment with established standards and national initiatives related to digital and data governance. This role involves supporting public health informatics initiatives within SPIM, contributing to the development of strategies, guidelines, and frameworks for data integration to support the work of ZNPHI staff with the primary goal of facilitating data-driven decision-making processes for surveillance and response.

Core Roles and Responsibilities: 

Support strategic planning, deployment, maintenance, and utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems and operationshttps://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/opinion/The-strategic-CIOs-first-day-In-search-of-IT-operational-excellence to meet public health informatics needs and facilitate decision making using data
Support SPIM and other departments to define data repository requirements that support the decision-making needs of users at ZNPHI. This may include integrated data repositories for data within ZNPHI and for data shared by partners such as laboratory and vaccine coverage information, wastewater and serosurveillance data from MOH and other sectors.
Gather and support data science and epidemiological requirements to ensure data availability for use in computational tools to compile and analyze data from  disease surveillance, pathogen genomic sequencing data, and population biology.
Support the identification of digital product needs for the institution and the governance and management of new products for the organization
Support ZNPHI staff (e.g. surveillance officers and epidemiologists) to create data algorithms and analytics for identification/classification of key components the national disease intelligence matrices on key public health conditions under surveillance
Consult with other scientists and researchers to analyze routine surveillance data, emergence response outputs and pathogen specific genomic information.
Support the development and enforcement of best practices for public health informatics across the ZNPHI
Recommend acquisition, installation and maintenance of ICT infrastructure in order to enhance accessibility of systems and required data sets by ZNPHI users
Coordinate the development of the Public Health Security Information Management System (PHSIMS), an integrated one health disease surveillance platform, for use by PHEOC and strengthen disease surveillance and response
Work with ICT to provide systems and performance feedback, conduct regular troubleshooting and maintenance procedures in order to ensure effective operation of systems and prevent loss of data and information
Provide training on mentorship support to emerging junior informaticians and wider staff within the Institute
Other duties may be assigned by the Supervisor.

Qualifications & Experience: 

Full Grade 12 School Certificate with minimum five O level credits including English and Mathematics
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, health information management, Computer information systems or related
Master’s degree in computational science, informatics, biostatistics, mathematics or related field
PhD in a relevant field is an added advantage
Demonstrated experience in implementing data pipelines into data warehouses and data querying and analysis in the health sector
Ability to build and optimize data pipelines and systems architecture
Strong knowledge of SQL, Python, and other data engineering tools and languages.
Strong understanding of data warehousing methods, database administration and hosting requirements
Familiarity with data security and privacy standards
Demonstrable outputs for analytics
Demonstrable experience supporting data visualization
Experience with data standards, integration, and transformation

Knowledge and Skills  

Strong analytical skills
Excellent oral and written communication skills
Team player with ability to work with multi-disciplinary teams
Excellent interpersonal and public relation skills
Capacity in decision-making and problem-solving
Familiarity with public health operations