Coördinator federated analysis - Architecture

Health-RI is a Dutch non-profit foundation supporting a growing network of organizations to realize a national health data infrastructure for biomedical and health research and innovation. Health-RI has recently acquired significant government funding to help establish a coordinated national data expertise and infrastructure network of FAIR-compliant regional nodes of organizations in healthcare and health research. Health-RI’s mission is to build an integrated health data research infrastructure accessible for researchers, citizens and care providers. Health-RI team facilitates and fosters the optimal use of knowledge, tools, facilities, health data and samples to enable data driven health research and to accelerate sustainable and affordable personalized medicine and health. 

To support our Architecture team we are looking for an Coordinator Federated Analysis (0.8 – 1.0 fte).

The architecture team of Health-RI strives to make observational health data from the Dutch clinical practice available for research and innovation in a structured and responsible manner including methods for data linkage with new and existing research study data and national registries. This ambition requires an integrated IT architecture which incorporates the FAIR principles and ethical & legal standards by design. The design and implementation of this architecture will be done in an agile manner involving a national network of stakeholders. The architecture team is not only responsible for the design, but also for the technical implementation in close collaboration with specific use cases supported by Health-RI.

Your role

You are responsible the design and implementation of a consistent set of standards, processes and tools enabling data analysis across Health-RI nodes (federated as well as centralized in a secure project workspace). You are a coordinator and active participant of a nation-wide team consistent of local data analysis and software management experts in each of the Health-RI nodes (mostly UMCs) who will jointly work on the design and implementation of the Health-RI analysis capabilities.

Furthermore, you are responsible (with the national team) for the specification of the minimal requirements and security standards to enable federated analysis and machine learning (based on pre-existing work in the Personal Health Train project teams), as well as for the support of the first use cases in this area. Besides that, the implementation, integration, and testing of the central components of the Health-RI analysis tools in close collaboration with the Health-RI CTO who will be leading the development team, will be one of your focus points.

You will be a member of the central Health-RI architecture team overseeing the consistent design and implementation of all Health-RI infrastructure components. You maintain close contacts with the other Health-RI themes (FAIR data, ELSI, Services, Biobanking) to ensure close alignment with solutions developed in these themes. You will align with national health data collections that could be linked to the Health-RI data analysis environment, e.g. NKR, Palga, DICA, CBS, etc.

Your profile

You have at least an MSc, a PhD is preferred. We are looking for someone with experience on the interface between biology/ medicine and computer science, e.g., computer science education and experience in a health context, or vice versa.

You have your background in medical informatics, bioinformatics, medicine, biology, or a similar life sciences education. Your domain expertise in federated analysis or machine learning in the health data domain is a must. Experience with data linkage and the underlying technical and ethical/legal challenges would be desirable. (Technical) project management skills are present and you have experience with gathering and prioritization and able to translate those into formats digestible by software developers. Excellent oral and written communication skills in English is a must, preferably also in Dutch. You are willing and able to travel the country at a high frequency to connect to all Health-RI nodes and other relevant stakeholders. A broad network in UMCs and international research infrastructures and national data registries would be desirable.

We offer

You will be appointed at Health-RI, offering a flexible working environment. We offer you a role in our team that leaves ample room for your personal growth, embedded in a national and international expert network. Our office in Utrecht serves as your basis, where we usually convene as a team on a regular basis. Of course, in the pandemic, all of us are working from home, and we collaborate using online tools. In general, working from home for part of your time is a natural practice in our organization. For your projects you will also travel to meet and work with our partner groups across the life sciences and health domain.  

 We offer you an appointment for initially 1 year, with the intention to extend this as a permanent position. Health-RI has a 38 hour working week and participates in the ABP pension fund. Gross salary level is based on the VSNU Scale 11-12, depending on your education and work experience. In addition you will receive 8% holiday allowance and 8% end-year bonus, following the labor agreement of the Dutch universities. 

Please send your motivation letter and curriculum vitae before June 25, 2022 to hr@health-ri.nl. For more information, please contact niels.bolding@health-ri.nl or rob.hooft@dtls.nl.