[TriZPUG] [Fwd: CS oppurtunity for development in West Africa]

[Chris Calloway]

I'm forwarding this to you from our friend Jonah Bossewitch at Columbia 
as I know there are a lot of you on this list active in the field of 
public health.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: CS oppurtunity for development in West Africa
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 07:56:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Jonah Bossewitch
To: Chris Calloway

This is an interesting position that you or someone you know may be 
interested in.

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Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the Department of 
Computer Science of the University of Southern Maine, the Ghana Health 
Service, and the Grameen Foundation have formed a partnership for health 
information systems development.  To be known as the Ghana Health 
Information Systems Development (GHISD) Initiative, the project will 
develop, test, and scale up technology for health information 
management.  In particular, GHISD will test whether the adaptation of 
existing mobile phone technology can help address these problems by 
significantly easing information capture for community-based health care 
workers and providing a mechanism for communication between front-line 
health care workers and their supervisors. Little is known about the 
feasibility of utilizing mobile phone technology for reforming routine 
health information operations and even less is known about the use of 
information systems as a tool for reforming community health care worker 
efficiency and health service effectiveness. Filling these critical 
knowledge gaps, the project will test whether promising technology can 
strengthen the community-based health care services that are 
increasingly being implemented throughout the developing world.

The GHISD project seeks to hire a computer scientist who will be posted 
at the Dodowa Health Research Centre (DHRC) in the Dangbe West District 
of Ghana.  As one of the key members of a software development team, the 
computer scientist will be involved in the design, implementation, and 
testing of server-based health information systems software to support 
the use of mobile devices. This important position will form the 
collaborative link between research scientists at Columbia University, 
the University of Southern Maine and the Ghana Health Service.  The 
computer scientist will help identify significant use cases, identify 
problems in the deployment of software, and form the critical link 
between developers and users.

QUALIFICATIONS
The Computer Scientist will possess the following qualifications:
	•	Bachelors Degree in Computer Science required
	•	Masters Degree in Computer Science preferred
	•	Advanced quantitative research skills in health, statistics, or 
population sciences; experience with health systems qualitative research 
desirable.
	•	Experience with health information applications in Africa desirable

SKILLS / EXPERIENCE

	•	Work experience in Africa desirable.
	•	Willingness to work and live in Ghana.
	•	Able to effectively communicate with stakeholders.
	•	Experience and interest in developing server side software systems 
that manage databases.
	•	Experience working with a team of experts in various 
technical/managerial areas
	•	Fluency in English, knowledge of an African language desirable.

Contact:

James Phillips
School of Public Health
Columbia University
jfp2113 ta columbia tod edu

Bruce MacLeod
U. of Southern Maine
macleod ta usm tod maine tod edu

Ryan Kelsey
CCNMTL
ryan ta columbia tod edu

-- 
Sincerely,

Chris Calloway
http://www.secoora.org
office: 332 Chapman Hall   phone: (919) 599-3530
mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599