The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is seeking a chief health informatics officer, according to a job posting on USAjobs.gov.
The individual chosen for the role “will develop requirements and content for health-related information technology with an initial focus on improving innovation and interoperability.”
If this focus on interoperability sounds familiar, well … it should. The agency has been pushing data sharing for a while now.
At HIMSS in early March, CMS Administrator Seema Verma introduced the agency’s new MyHealthEData, a government-wide project aimed at giving patients more control over their health information. And in April, it announced plans to bid adieu to Meaningful Use, overhauling the program and renaming it “Promoting Interoperability.” The shift, CMS said, is a way to improve the exchange of health information and make it easier for patients to get their health records electronically.
The search for a health informatics expert seems to be a way to further those interoperability-focused efforts.
The officer’s core duties include creating a health IT and information management strategy for CMS and HHS and weighing in on health IT information management and technology innovation policy. Additionally, the candidate will collaborate with internal and external individuals to see how CMS should apply health informatics to potential business solutions. The job posting also notes the candidate shall act as a liaison between CMS and private stakeholders to improve the agency’s health IT and information management policy.
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A CMS official also informed Politico’s Morning eHealth that the candidate will work in Verma’s office with an “interoperability tiger team,” the size of which is yet to be determined.
The deadline to apply is July 20.
Photo: RichVantage, Getty Images
