CDC Health Information Innovation Consortium (CHIIC) August 16 Forum

Tuesday, August 16, 2016 from 10:00 - 11:00am ET

Chamblee Building 106, Room 1A + webinar

Agenda

Introduction – Brian Lee – 10 minutes
Proof of Concept and Technology for Hosting Bio-Surveillance Systems in the Amazon Infrastructure Cloud - Seth Sims in the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) – 20 minutes
Hepatitis C is a major public health problem in the United States and worldwide. Outbreaks of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections associated with unsafe injection practices, drug diversion, and other exposures to blood and blood products are difficult to detect and investigate. Thus, effective HCV outbreak investigation requires comprehensive viral hepatitis surveillance and robust case investigation.
The web-based Global Health, Outbreak and Surveillance Technology (GHOST), recently developed in Division of Viral Hepatitis (DVH), enables public health laboratories to identify outbreaks by simply uploading and automatically analyzing viral sequences using novel online tools. Pathogen outbreaks are difficult to predict and can generate an unusually large volume of data for analysis. The demand of computational resources fits perfectly for cloud capabilities. The cloud-based GHOST is more efficient in facilitating a fast response to public health emergencies, while reducing infrastructure and maintenance costs.
To view the full project description, click here.
DevOps: The Secret Sauce for Building Forward Looking Software- Jim Nasr (Entrepreneur in Residence) Center for Surveillance Epidemiology and Laboratory Service, Division of Health Informatics and Surveillance (DHIS). - 20 minutes

A number of underlying currents have led us to reconsider architectural approaches for building software in DHIS. These include: the state of the existing DHIS application portfolio, needs and desire for intra and inter agency application interoperability, trends in federal and public health, as well as emerging technology standards that enable richer innovation and ultimately better citizen interaction. The CDC is at heart a data organization—enabling “open data” supports its mission. Our hypothesis for building forward looking software at DHIS is that if open data is the mission then we need APIs and supporting DevOps as critical success factors, and the way we have built software in the past is not the way to proceed to meet this mission.

We see a micro-services architectural style, based on proven open source and uncoupled technologies, as the core approach for building APIs. This approach displaces complexity of software development, and brings opportunities and challenges. In the long-term, if executed correctly, we reap benefits of reusable software components, reduced domain-driven application development and can leverage a common, albeit complex, DevOps infrastructure that supports multiple programs. Getting DevOps right is the secret sauce and the biggest challenge—far from just a technical obstacle, there are bigger monsters in the dark in the shape of required process, organization and, in particular, culture change. This talk reviews DHIS’s plans for undertaking this DevOps challenge and where we see critical need for cross-agency collaboration.
Discussion & Suggestions – 10 minutes