Senior Health Informatics Standards and Interoperability Consultant

Job Summary

Senior Health Informatics Standards and Interoperability Consultant

Aptive is seeking a Senior Health Informatics Standards and Interoperability Consultant to support the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Office of Health Informatics (OHI), Clinical Informatics and Data Management Office (OCI), in advancing the enterprise standard of care through standardized, semantically consistent, and reliably exchanged health data across 170+ VA Medical Centers.

This role spans both the meaning of clinical data and the movement of it. You will develop the semantic infrastructure (metadata, ontology standards, terminology tooling, and knowledge management resources) that governs how clinical concepts are represented, and you will provide expert oversight across healthcare integration standards, standards implementation, data integration, systems integration, data modeling, and data warehousing. You will serve as the formal liaison and advisor between VHA architecture and analysis teams and standards bodies such as HL7, and provide expert guidance on scientific and medical informatics domains.

Work on this program is organized under the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Semantic models, integration designs, data models, and analytical products are delivered as Features within quarterly Planning Intervals, demonstrated to the government on a two-week cadence, and tracked in Jira and Jira Align. The ideal candidate brings a decade of analysis and management experience in the health sciences, deep ontology and interoperability expertise, and the judgment to set technical direction that others will build against.

Primary Responsibilities

• Semantic Infrastructure Development. Develop and maintain the semantic infrastructure supporting enterprise clinical data, including metadata, ontology standards, information models, reference data, and value sets used in the classification and standardization of clinical and medical data.
• Ontology Design and Governance. Design, extend, and govern ontologies and controlled vocabularies; establish modeling conventions, hierarchies, and post-coordination rules; and evaluate ontology quality, internal consistency, and fitness for intended use.
• Semantic Interoperability. Apply semantic interoperability concepts so clinical data can be exchanged and reused across systems without loss of meaning; develop, test, and validate mappings and crosswalks between local, national, and international code systems.
• Knowledge Management. Build and maintain knowledge management resources such as wikis, knowledge bases, data dictionaries, modeling guides, and decision repositories so that semantic and architectural decisions remain discoverable, auditable, and reusable.
• Healthcare Integration Standards Oversight. Provide expert oversight of healthcare integration standards across the program; establish which standards apply to which exchange scenarios, resolve conflicting interpretations, and set the technical direction that engineering and analysis teams build against.
• Standards Implementation. Guide implementation of HL7 v2, C-CDA, FHIR, SNOMED CT, LOINC, RxNorm, and CDISC; review interface specifications, conformance profiles, and implementation guides; and validate that delivered work conforms to both the standard and VHA requirements.
• Data Integration. Direct the design and oversight of data integration across clinical, administrative, and ancillary source systems; define transformation, reconciliation, and error-handling approaches; and assess integration quality, completeness, and semantic fidelity end to end.
• Systems Integration. Oversee integration between enterprise health systems and downstream consumers; evaluate interface engines, messaging patterns, and API strategies; and identify dependencies, failure modes, and performance constraints before they reach production.
• Data Modeling. Lead logical and physical data modeling for health information assets; govern model conventions, keys, and lineage; and ensure models support both operational exchange and downstream analytic use without rework.
• Data Warehousing. Provide oversight of health data warehouse design and evolution, including source-to-target mapping, dimensional and normalized modeling approaches, historization, and the controls needed to keep warehoused data trustworthy for reporting and decision support.
• High-Level Analysis. Perform high-level analytical duties on complex informatics, integration, and information management problems; evaluate options against cost, risk, and mission impact; and produce defensible recommendations for government decision-makers.
• Standards Body Liaison. Serve as liaison and advisor between the architecture and analysis team and standards bodies such as HL7, SNOMED International, and CDISC; track ballots, releases, and emerging specifications; represent VHA technical interests; and translate standards activity into concrete program guidance.
• Expert Domain Guidance. Provide expert guidance on scientific and medical informatics domains to clinical subject matter experts, engineers, data architects, and governance bodies, translating technical constraints into decisions leadership can act on.
• Leadership and Training in Health Standards. Provide leadership and training in health standards to architects, analysts, engineers, and clinical stakeholders; build reference materials and reusable guidance; and raise the standards fluency of the teams you support.
• Feature Delivery. Translate government-provided problem statements into epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, and non-functional requirements for semantic, integration, modeling, and warehousing work prioritized in Planning Interval planning.
• Agile Team Participation. Serve as the senior informatics and standards authority on interdisciplinary agile teams; participate in daily stand-ups, iteration planning, PI planning, retrospectives, roadmap updates, and biweekly demonstration ceremonies.
• Documentation and Artifacts. Produce information models, architecture depictions, interface specifications, mapping documents, data dictionaries, and technical documentation to a standard that supports government acceptance, audit, and reuse across teams.
• Risk, Quality, and Stakeholder Engagement. Identify, document, and track risks and issues related to data standards, terminology currency, integration, and semantic integrity; maintain risk registers; and engage stakeholders across VHACO, VISNs, VAMCs, OIT, and partner organizations to support change management for standards and integration decisions.

Minimum Qualifications

• Master's degree in health or biomedical informatics, information or computer science, library and information science, a clinical discipline, or a related field.
• 10 years of analysis and/or management experience in one or more of the disciplines associated with the health sciences.
• Within that experience, a minimum of 5 years in ontology and semantic interoperability concepts related to clinical or medical data classification and standardization.
• Demonstrated experience working with standards bodies or standards such as SNOMED, CDISC, HL7, and ASCO.
• Demonstrated experience developing semantic infrastructure, including metadata, ontology standards, terminology tooling, and knowledge management resources.
• Expert-level command of healthcare integration standards and standards implementation, including HL7 v2, C-CDA, and FHIR.
• Demonstrated depth across data integration, systems integration, data modeling, and data warehousing sufficient to provide oversight rather than execution alone.
• Experience performing high-level analytical duties on complex health information problems.
• Experience serving as a liaison or advisor between technical teams and health standards bodies such as HL7.
• Demonstrated ability to provide leadership and training in health standards to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience working in an Agile or Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) environment, including backlog management and delivery tracking in Jira and/or Jira Align.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office 365, including advanced Excel; familiarity with Power BI and the Power Platform.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to brief technical, clinical, and executive stakeholders and produce decision-quality documentation.
• Ability to work independently, manage multiple concurrent priorities, and deliver on a fixed iteration and Planning Interval cadence.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a public trust clearance.
• Position is located within the United States; legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required.

Desired Qualifications

• Doctoral-level degree (PhD, MD, DO, PharmD) in a health science or informatics discipline.
• Clinical background such as physician, nurse, pharmacist, or allied health professional, with the ability to validate semantic and integration decisions against real clinical practice.
• HL7 certification (v2.x Control Specialist, CDA Specialist, or FHIR Proficiency) or SNOMED CT certification.
• Active participation in HL7, SNOMED International, LOINC, or CDISC work groups, ballot cycles, or connectathons.
• Hands-on experience with terminology and ontology tooling such as Apelon DTS, Protégé, Snowstorm, Ontoserver, or TermSpace.
• Hands-on experience with interface engines and integration platforms such as Mirth Connect, Rhapsody, or InterSystems.
• Experience with FHIR profiling and US Core, FHIR terminology service operations, and value set authoring or publication in VSAC.
• Experience with IHE profiles, national interoperability frameworks such as TEFCA, or health information exchange operations at scale.
• Experience with common data models or research data standards such as OMOP, i2b2, or CDISC SDTM and CDASH.
• Direct VA or VHA experience, including work with OHI, OCI, CPMO, EHRM, Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW), or VistA/CPRS.
• Hands-on experience with Oracle Health (Cerner Millennium) reference data, code sets, or interface configuration.
• Experience with knowledge representation technologies such as RDF, OWL, and SPARQL.
• Experience supporting data governance, master data management, or patient identity and record matching in a large health system.
• Experience mentoring or providing technical direction to informaticists, architects, and integration engineers.

About Aptive

About Aptive. Aptive partners with federal agencies to achieve their missions through improved performance, streamlined operations and enhanced service delivery. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, we support more than a dozen agencies including Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation. We specialize in applying technology, creativity and human-centered services to optimize mission delivery and improve experiences for millions of people who count on government services every day. Founded: 2012. Employees: 300+ nationwide.

EEO Statement

Aptive is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, parental status, veteran status, age, disability, or any other protected class. Veterans, members of the Reserve and National Guard, and transitioning active-duty service members are highly encouraged to apply. About Aptive: Aptive partners with federal agencies to achieve their missions through improved performance, streamlined operations and enhanced service delivery. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, we support more than a dozen agencies including Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation. We specialize in applying technology, creativity and human-centered services to optimize mission delivery and improve experiences for millions of people who count on government services every day. Founded: 2012. Employees: 300+ nationwide.