Health Information Exchange (HIE) Specialist

PLEASE NOTE:

We ask that you make your first contact solely through email. PLEASE no phone calls. We read every resume we get, honest ... no need to call us to confirm that we got yours. Ignore the advice of those who tell you that calling is the best way to increase your chances ... your chances are REDUCED if we feel you can't honor our simple request to let us decide who we want to talk to. We appreciate your understanding.

J2 Interactive, a software and IT consulting firm headquartered in Boston, MA and Windsor, UK, is looking for qualified candidates to help us on challenging health information exchange projects utilizing InterSystems HealthShare. Since 2007, we've been delivering large-scale HealthShare implementations for local RHIOs, statewide exchanges, and IDNs. As we continue to grow, we're hoping to add to our team of talented, experienced individuals with direct experience in health information exchange.

Though an ideal candidate would have prior experience with HealthShare, or the InterSystems technologies that underpin HealthShare such as Ensemble and Cache Object Script, we will be happy to consider candidates whose HIE experience was gained on another platform such as Axolotl, DBMotion, Medicity, MedPlus, Mirth, or Orion. As any qualified candidate will know, an HIE project encompasses a very broad range of expertise, and it's a rare individual who's strong in all areas.

But we believe that the right candidates will be able to climb the HealthShare learning curve if they already possess a deep understanding of underlying concepts such as:

• Traditional HL7 messaging/integration (ADT and clinical message types)
• CDA-based message formats (C-CDA, CCD)
• Web services/XML/XSLT
• IHE profiles, including PIX/PDQ, XDS.b, and XCA
• EHR interoperability
• Identity management (including experience with one or more vendor solutions such as IBM's Initiate or Quadramed's Smart IX)
• Consent modelling/XACML
• Population management/analytics
• NwHIN Connect and Direct
• Meaningful Use phase 1 and 2 requirements
• Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs)

The roles on a HealthShare implementation team are quite diverse, and the range of skills and abilities we need to bring to these projects is very broad. The ideal candidate will possess not only the full range of technical knowledge and capabilities, but also an understanding of the policy considerations that drive an HIE, experience dealing with the dynamics of stakeholder and vendor participation in an exchange, extremely strong communication skills, and an ability to evangelize on the benefits of health information exchange to anyone who'll listen. And heat vision ... you never know when you might need that on the job.

Assuming (just for a moment) that it might be unrealistic to expect all of that in one person, here's who should send in a resume for consideration:

• An architect-level technical lead who can engage clients at the CTO/CIO level, or even play a virtual CTO role on behalf of the client. Such an individual would need to have a very strong technical pedigree, a deep understanding of general systems architecture and database architecture considerations common to any large-scale implementation in any industry, leadership experience in healthcare IT or healthcare project consulting, facility with the various standards and concepts relevant to health information exchange, and the ability to aggressively attack the HealthShare learning curve with the goal of becoming an expert in how this specific technology platform addresses the various functional requirements of an HIE.
• A senior software developer with relevant experience building HIE solutions, in one or more of the areas described above: integration, EMRs, identity, consent, or analytics. Cache or Ensemble experience is a huge plus here, but not strictly necessary. A computer science background, experience with web and/or desktop application development, and fluency in other, more "mainstream" software development languages such as Java, C++, and SQL will lend significant credibility to your resume. The most important thing is that we need people who possess a deep understanding of object-oriented programming and approach projects with a professional software developer's mindset.
• A less technically-oriented person who wants to play a role as a project lead, analyst, or project coordinator. Because most of our roles are highly technical, the less technical candidate would need to be extremely strong on HIE strategy, policy-making, proposal writing, stakeholder engagement, requirements analysis, and project management. They would need to be able to command a room, take ownership of our team's collective responsibilities, and marshal the necessary resources on our end to deliver on every promise made.

As we say on all our job listings, we want people who are smart, creative, and fearless ... and this is especially true for the HIE space which is growing and evolving very rapidly. We'd always rather hire a brilliant, highly motivated person who'll have to climb more of a learning curve than someone with loads of relevant experience who lacks the personal qualities we're looking for. But of course, the perfect candidates will have both.

Also, being the flexible guys that we are, we're open to bringing the right person on as either a full-time, salaried employee or as an independent contractor. If you're a freelancer and want to stay that way, that's fine -- at least for some roles -- as long as we can get a minimum commitment from you (20-40 hours per week) that works for everyone.

Because we're covering a lot of ground with this listing, and we expect backgrounds and experience levels to vary significantly among candidates, we're listing a very broad salary range. But we make a point of paying our people well, commensurate with their experience level and the responsibilities we ask them to take on. We're fortunate enough to be working in a segment of the IT market that is exploding with opportunity, and we want only the best people to help us continue to build our reputation as one of the preeminent integration and application development firms in the healthcare industry.

At J2 we get a lot of satisfaction out of helping our customers succeed, and we want people with that same commitment to getting the job done right. We work in small teams and we're not afraid to give people the responsibility of working directly with clients, defining project specs, and choosing implementation strategies. We seek out projects with long-term resource needs so that both our clients and our developers have a sense of continuity and real accomplishment. Our flexible work hours, casual work environment, and telecommuting options give our staff a high quality of life to go along with the technical and creative challenges of the work itself.

Benefits include:

• The ability to telecommute from your home office
• Minimal travel on most projects, though leadership roles will often come with some expectation of travel and in-person customer contact

And if you join us as a Full time employee:

• Private Medical Insurance, paid by the company
• Income Protection Plan
• Life Cover
• Voluntary pension plan, with company matching up to 4% of salary
• Aggressive employee profit-sharing program

In short, we think J2 is a great place to work because we're a small firm, all of us are software developers, and all of us want exciting work while still enjoying the benefits of a telecommuting lifestyle. Anyone who's interested, send in your resume ... we move fast, so if you've got what we're looking for, you'll be amazed at how quickly you might have yourself a new job that you'll love.