Health Information Systems (HIS) Officer - Turkana

Department: M&E

Responsible to:Monitoring and Evaluation Officer

Staff directly supervised: Data clerks (from time to time)

Relationships internally: All programme and Support staff

Relationships externally: MoMS/MoPHS personnel, other governmental and non governmental counterparts, community members

Overall Objective of the Position

The HIS Officer is based in Lodwar and will have responsibility for collection, collation, compilation, analysis, maintaining and dissemination of data on Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health, Primary Health Care, Nutrition, EPI and other project related areas.

S/he will assist the M&E Officer in establishing and strengthening a comprehensive Monitoring and Evaluation system to measure programme progress and impact and establish effective lesson learning and beneficiary accountability mechanisms in the project area.

Specific Responsibilities:

• Acts as the primary contact for programme dataset.
• Manage data throughout project lifecycle from start to end as directed by project coordinator or manager.
• Ensure collection and entry of relevant data related to Merlin projects in a timely manner, and feedback given to the source of the data such as DHMTs, Health Facilities and Communities in collaboration with other departments
• Analysis of collected data, make necessary visual presentation and give feedback to each service delivery point.
• Ensure the database in Merlin M&E department and MoH are functional and in use
• Assist MoH staff in collecting, collating and disseminating primary and reproductive health, nutrition, WATSAN and other relevant data on time.
• Assist conduction of survey, evaluation and research activities
• Ensure MoH data tools (registers, forms etc) are correctly utilised, kept and updated within Merlin project areas including health facilities and communities
• Assist the M&E officer and programme staff with the preparation and presentation of data for internal and donor reports in a timely manner
• Ensure availability of relevant data collection tools within the Merlin supported health facilities
• Foster ownership of data collection tools and related data by health facilities.
• Regularly collect and at all times maintain in a user-friendly form all projects data in a Merlin database.
• Assist the M&E officer in identifying training needs on data for Health Records Officers and other MOH personnel on data collection, entry, analysis and report writing.
• Ensure data is segregated by gender and flag any gender disparities so as to enhance gender sensitive programming.
• Ensure procedures in place are followed and documenting where not, to implement policies on, data quality assurance, procedures, data collection and storage.
• Document and maintain metadata (data about data) records.
• Manages the logical data model within repository.
• Manipulates and queries data content to support operational information needs and provide Management reports.
• Assists and trains users in subject matter-specific applications, including maintaining training manuals and other user documentation.
• Establish contacts with other agencies and Information Officers within government departments and external agencies..
• Developing protocol for sharing data and ensuring the organization activities meet the requirements of the Data Protection Act.
• Interface with the project coordinators and research officers of projects to manage the data collection and cleaning
• Collaborate with ICT software partners in the design of data collection instruments.
• Participate in data management enhancement activities for staff.
• Perform any other duty assigned by the supervisor

Person Specification/Requirements

• A Degree or Diploma in Health Records and Information, Applied Epidemiology, Health Information Systems (Medical statistics), Information Management or or equivalent
• Experience of over 2 years in health information systems support in an NGO
• Knowledge of database design and use
• Knowledge of data processing and analysis
• Knowledge of monitoring and evaluation methodologies.
• Ability to organize and plan
• Knowledge of MS Excel/ Access, EPI info, SPSS or similar data analysis programs
• Is an expert user of subject matter-specific data management tools
• Knowledge of sampling and questionnaire design
• Professional initiative, commitment and motivation
• Ability to work in a team
• Willingness to live and work in hardship areas

How to apply

All applications should be sent to:

HR Department,
Merlin, Nairobi Office,
P.O Box 3350 – 00200,
Nairobi, Kenya

or Email to: recruitment@merlin-kenya.org

Application deadline is 5:00pm on 10th February 2012.

Please note that only short listed candidates will be contacted.