Immunization Information System Interoperability… What We’ve Learned Along the Way

The IZ Gateway initiative (IZG) sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is up and running. HLN has helped its Immunization Information System (IIS) clients connect to other IIS via the IZ Gateway from planning through testing and go-live. As anticipated, this electronic data exchange has resulted in an increase in record completeness for patient doses received in one jurisdiction, while living in another. Testing between our clients and other IISs, referred to as IIS-IIS pairings, has spurred productive inter-jurisdictional interoperability discussions, while also highlighting nuances in platform configuration. A few of these nuances are provided below.

Read More »

To Trust Artificial Intelligence, It Must Be Open And Transparent. Period.

Machine learning has been around for a long time. But in late 2022, recent advancements in deep learning and large language models started to change the game and come into the public eye. And people started thinking, “We love Open Source software, so, let’s have Open Source AI, too.” But what is Open Source AI? And the answer is: we don’t know yet. Machine learning models are not software. Software is written by humans, like me. Machine learning models are trained; they learn on their own automatically, based on the input data provided by humans. When programmers want to fix a computer program, they know what they need: the source code. But if you want to fix a model, you need a lot more: software to train it, data to train it, a plan for training it, and so forth. It is much more complex. And reproducing it exactly ranges from difficult to nearly impossible.

Read More »

Understanding the Cyber Resilience Act: What Everyone involved in Open Source Development Should Know

The European Union is making big changes to cybersecurity requirements with its proposed Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). You may have heard about the CRA’s potential impact on the open source ecosystem. But what does the Cyber Resilience Act mean for you? This post is an introduction to the Act and explains how it may affect the open source maintainers and developer community. Note that this post is based on a draft of the CRA from September 15, 2022. The Act is still in a draft stage and getting feedback, and its provisions may differ before it is passed into law. The Cyber Resilience Act was introduced by the European Parliament in September 2022. Its purpose is to establish cybersecurity requirements for devices and software marketed in the EU. Everybody who places digital products in the EU market will be responsible for additional obligations around reporting and compliance, such as fixing discovered vulnerabilities, providing software updates, and auditing and certifying the products.

Read More »

Latest News

Feature Articles

Latest News Clippings