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Prolifics Plans to Leverage IBM Cloud Paks to Help Clients Modernize Workloads

Prolifics, a global digital transformation leader, today announced a collaboration with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to leverage IBM Cloud Paks with Prolifics solutions to assist clients with quick and secured application modernization, integration, and legacy system moves across hybrid cloud platforms.

Prolifics built its healthcare solution, Quick FHIR, on IBM Cloud Paks, enterprise-ready containerized solutions running on Red Hat OpenShift. Prolifics Quick FHIR is a digital healthcare integration and data solution based on the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards for exchanging electronic health records. Quick FHIR allows organizations to easily use and share information with application programming interfaces (APIs) and employ artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to derive useful, actionable insights from de-identified data.

Prolifics plans to leverage IBM Cloud Paks for other new and existing Prolifics solutions. These include data privacy solutions addressing the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and similar compliance regulations, as well as an array of application modernization and integration offerings using cloud and cloud hybrid platforms.

“We chose to build on top of IBM’s Cloud Paks because we find this helps reduce long-term cost of ownership for our solutions,” said Greg Hodgkinson, Prolifics Chief Technology Officer. “They package up enterprise-class application, automation, integration and data capabilities delivered on a common, simplified operations model that provides ultimate freedom of architectural choice and flexibility. We’re excited about how this collaboration with IBM can help us accelerate bringing these important solutions to our clients.”

Prolifics is part of IBM’s Cloud Pak Ecosystem, an initiative to support global system integrators and independent software vendors to help clients modernize workloads from bare-metal to multicloud and everything in between with Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform.

Earlier this summer, Prolifics was named one of the 2020 IBM Think Build Grow winners, which honors next generation solutions utilizing IBM Cloud. In addition, Prolifics earned the IBM Cloud Excellence Award: Cloud Pak during IBM’s first-ever virtual Think conference in May 2020. Excellence Awards recognize IBM Business Partners who drive exceptional client experiences and business growth.

About Prolifics

Prolifics is a global digital transformation leader with expertise in cloud, data & analytics, DevOps, digital business, quality assurance, and industries. We provide consulting, engineering and managed services for all our practice areas at any point you need them, resulting in fast, complete solution delivery experiences that you will find nowhere else. Visit prolifics.com.

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

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Testing and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Today’s business environment puts a premium on the ability to react, change and rebound quickly. We’re looking to do everything faster – including testing – and once speed is part of the equation, there’s no going back.

What you want in testing…

You’re updating or replacing your legacy systems – usually in tight time frames – for operational speed, efficiency, savings and a better customer experience. In this environment you need these new applications in place immediately, but you must be certain they do what they’re supposed to, are secure and scalable.

This means that testing is more crucial than ever before – it can make or break your entire digital transformation. You want – and need – testing that gives you both confidence and speed to market.

What can do it…

Gartner tells us: “Intelligent automation provides huge potential for greater productivity and efficiency in application testing, at a lower cost.” However, Gartner also says: “Only 12 percent of organizations leverage (artificial intelligence) AI for testing more than 10 percent of the time.”

What’s an example of AI at work in testing? By replicating the reasoning, thought process and experience of a human tester (but faster and better), AI analyzes the continuously growing testing data of an application to find hidden patterns and insights. The AI then predicts how the tested application will behave – specifically identifying areas or test cases that are more likely to fail. This means smarter, more focused and earlier testing, reducing overall test cycle time and cost.

What the others are offering…

A lot of testing providers are still trying to catch up to today’s more innovative modernization projects. They say their testing is automated, and that’s correct. But it’s traditional automation that’s still not as fast or affordable, and often not part of the entire test lifecycle – certainly not as “intelligent” as it could be.

A few providers have ventured into the AI space when it comes to testing. They tell you they have AI as part of their testing or give you an “AI-tool” but without further direction or support. These providers are not offering the next level of agile, reliable and scalable testing – that uses intelligent automation with artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML).

What you need…

Where do you find testing that actually leverages intelligent automation and AI? You need a provider with real engineers who have the data science know-how and methodology to inject true AI/ML into your entire testing lifecycle – from strategy, design, data, and test cases through execution and analytics. Testing with true AI is a unique, game-changing differentiator – reducing the overall testing lifecycle while increasing quality, giving you both the high confidence and speed to market you need.

Prolifics can help

You have a vision – don’t let your technology slow you down. Prolifics’ solutions and experience will get you there. Prolifics Quality Fusion testing solution is a single, Cloud-based platform using Open Source components with the unique addition of embedded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Quality Fusion automates test design, data, execution and analytics across web, mobile, desktop and APIs. Prolifics’ Business Assurance 360 (BA360) is the first-of-its-kind tool that helps map and align every stage of the Quality Assurance process to your company’s business objectives, while using machine learning (ML) to automatically generate test cases. Check out Prolifics’ Innovation Sandbox, Episode 5 – AI Powered Testing, and read more about our ML solutions

Let’s talk

So, sit down with us – let’s talk about your challenges, review and reevaluate your plans and get you started where it makes the most sense. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just our tagline, it’s what drives us. Email solutions@prolifics.com.

Prolifics is proud to announce that Gunjan Goel, Prolifics’ Financial Services and Banking Partner, has been named as a member of the Advisory Panel for the Pace University Lubin School of Business Design Thinking (DT) Program.

“Design Thinking” is about employing a set of methods and mindsets that promotes a human-centered approach to innovation. The Lubin School of Business DT Program curriculum is designed to provide professionals the skills and insights to move Design Thinking initiatives forward within their organizations, such as using best-in-class, customer-centric methodologies to drive customer engagement.  

Membership on the Advisory Panel is by invitation only and limited to 30 hand-picked industry leaders. Panel members provide strategic reviews of Lubin School offerings; present at courses, forums and conferences; and help link the Lubin School with the business community.

Located in New York City, Pace University Lubin School of Business is a public university with students from across the nation and the world. The Design Thinking Program is offered as a hands-on, 4-day immersion program or an 8-week online program.

Gunjan Goel is an innovator, change agent and leader, with expertise in process improvement, customer experience, analytics and security. He has been with Prolifics for 12 years and has more than 22 years of banking and financial services consulting experience for clients across North America, Europe and India. Goel consistently identifies and executes transformational programs that help financial institutions stay ahead in our constantly changing business landscape – an environment of new boundaries, ever-evolving industry models, fluid customer channels and increasingly burdensome regulations.

Congratulations to Gunjan on his appointment. You can learn more about him here and reach him at gunjan.goel@prolifics.com. You can visit Gunjan’s Advisory Panel profile here.

Due to COVID-19, CMS has delayed enforcement of the Patient Access and Provider Directory APIs of its FHIR-based CMS-9115-F final rule by six months, from January 2021 to July 2021. So, while there’s a little more breathing room, don’t wait – those six extra months will go by fast. You really need to address the deadline – now.

You already know this…but we’ll repeat it

Just before the pandemic hit, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released final rule CMS-9115-F that covered Interoperability and Patient Access. A major requirement of the final rule – Patient Access – says that Medicare healthcare payers holding patient information must do the following:

• Make patient data available to patients via third-party apps using FHIR APIs.
• Provide publicly accessible directories of their network providers using FHIR APIs.

Failure to do the above could be construed as “information blocking” – and could open payers up to hefty civil monetary penalties.

People really like having access to their health data. CMS created the “Blue Button” in 2010 for Medicare beneficiaries to download their claim data. Since then, patients have pressed the Blue Button more than one million times. CMS’s new, improved Blue Button 2.0 is an API that contains four years of Medicare data for 53 million people.

But all of this isn’t required until July. Wait…that’s not far off.

You’re right. It’s almost here. CMS adopted the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) data API standards framework into its Interoperability and Patient Access final rule – and it comes into force July 1, 2021.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen the payer industry fall into two general categories:

• Those that are medium/smaller, with fewer and/or swamped IT resources unable to take on the requirements of the Interoperability and Patient Access final rule.
• Larger organizations in which bureaucracies and approval levels haven’t fully come to terms with the immediacy of CMS-9115-F (or believe that market forces will result in another delay).

In either case July 1, 2021 is coming fast. Did we mention hefty potential civil monetary penalties?

Okay – we know the deadline is approaching. Do we panic?

No – not just yet. As with many business solutions, you will generally have the “build or buy” scenario. As far as building, at a minimum you’ll need to know if your swamped IT staff can do the following (sorry, it’s a bit techy):

• Become technical experts on FHIR V4 API and resource specification, including resource profiles
• Determine which of the more than 140 FHIR APIs and dozens of resource types you need to implement for mandate compliance
• Design an appropriate consent model for your patients and tie that in with your web properties and OpenID/OAuth-based security infrastructure
• Design and deploy an audit infrastructure that you can use to defend against potential “information blocking” complaints
• Determine how you are going to deal with data quality issues that propagate from your existing data sources
• Deal with bi-directional data synchronization of data in a multi-source data scenario
• Create all the mappings for all the FHIR APIs and Resources that you’re going to need to map/transform to/from HL7

Given the complexity and the time frame, perhaps buying is the way to go.

What to ask about if you’re buying

There are a number of FHIR-related solutions that can meet your compliance needs out there, so be sure you know what you’re getting into. Some questions to ask a potential provider:

• Is it tech-vendor neutral? That is, is it viable on the platform that works best for you, or is the provider locked in? For example, AWS versus IBM Cloud or Azure.
• Can you migrate the solution easily between cloud, on-prem and hybrid models?
• Can one deployment function for multiple backend health record systems?
• Will is work securely through the Internet on its own, versus requiring you to buy into expensive VAN-like infrastructure?
• Will it scale as your needs change?
• Will it work with the technology you already have?
• Can it be tailored towards broader FHIR usage, or is it just an “out-of-the-box” solution for CMS-9115-F compliance?
• Does it have data quality capabilities to deal with data quality issues before those issues are propagated outside of your data perimeter?
• Will it audit your end-to-end FHIR data flows as a defense against potential “information blocking” complaints?
• If you want, will the provider run it for you as a managed service?

So, there’s a lot to think about – and get implemented – by July 2021. Don’t wait – the CMS deadline is on its way.

Prolifics can help

Prolifics offers you our Quick FHIR solution that will jumpstart your FHIR initiative and CMS compliance. Our solution is built on leading technology that accelerates FHIR adoption. Quick FHIR deployments are end-to-end solutions built to each unique client’s requirements, from CMS-9115-F compliance to FHIR as the backbone of your organizations data strategy. We’ll guide you in a rapid, comprehensive implementation across your enterprise. You can start your Quick FHIR journey with a no-cost workshop. Learn more from our brochure, Quick FHIR for CMS Mandate Compliance, and email solutions@prolifics.com to get going.

[For complete information, check out Prolifics guide to FHIR.]

Talk with us

You have a vision for your organization – don’t let your technology slow you down. Our Quick FHIR solution and experience will get you there. Sit down with us – let’s talk about your challenges, review and reevaluate your plans and get you started where it makes the most sense. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just our tagline, it’s what drives us. It’s how we deliver solutions and services. It’s our commitment to you – and it’s needed today more than ever. Visit www.prolifics.com or email solutions@prolifics.com.

COVID-19 created the work-from-home phenomenon, but as things hopefully get back to normal, your employees may not be returning to the office any time soon. Surveys of both companies and employees show a willingness, if not a desire, to keep the office in the home scenario going forward. What’s an IT department to do?

The way it was

Before COVID-19 forced the workforce from the office to work-from-home (WFH), companies had good control on the devices, login IDs, and authorizations used by their employees at the office. Security could control who logged in from the internal networks on computers and devices – all installed and controlled by the IT department. Yes, there were a few people who needed remote access, but those were managed and audited by using a VPN tunnel into the corporate networks.

The WFH rush caused problems

Now at home, employees are using either company supplied computers or, like most of us, our personal computers and devices. This resulted in the following:

• Employees needed access to the applications and data needed to do their jobs. IT departments had a difficult time processing the volume of remote access requests. To solve the problem, they may have created a global rule that everyone was granted remote access. The company VPNs also became overloaded, causing them to slow down or crash. Some cloud applications were only allowing access if employees were logging in from the corporate network.
• In the rush to allow everyone remote corporate access, the security department lost control of who was logging in from where and on what devices. They didn’t know if the people logging in from all these remote devices were the account owners – or if in that group a bad actor had gotten into an account and now had access to applications and files.
• Instead of only allowing access to their cloud applications from the corporate network, they changed the cloud application login policy to allow logins from anywhere. Yes, people could access the cloud applications from home, but so could anyone from almost any place on the planet.

What to look for in WFH security

If you need to provide WFH remote access, what do you need to be assured that the access to the applications, data and personal information is secure? Companies are looking for a security framework that provides threat management – the detecting and managing of cyber risk – including:

• Authentication: Identity as a Service (IDaaS) solutions provide scalable Identity and Access Management from the cloud. IDaaS solutions provide a first point of entry to a corporate network. The person’s identity is confirmed using a login/id, token, or 2FA strategy. Login information, such as when and where, are recorded.  
• Authorization: Simply – who has access to what. Configuring Single Sign-on (federations) allows the user to securely access applications and data that they are entitled to without having to enter a login ID and password every time. 
• Auditing: Keeping track of who is logging in from where and what they are accessing. For example, if a furloughed employee still has a network account, they could potentially access confidential applications and data that they should no longer have access to. 
• Analytics: More IdaaS solutions are using advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine if there is a login or data breach happening. The solutions analyze the identity and access data on an ongoing basis to determine if there may be unusual data downloaded, or a known malware has been uploaded and installed.
• Incident response: When a security breach does happen, do you know how to respond? If someone opens an email that installs ransomware, does your security department have a business continuity plan? If personal information has been compromised, what are your GDPR and CCPA responsibilities?  An incident response plan will spell it all out.

There are many other security needs, but these are some of the areas that you need to address, scale and deploy with your WFH employees.

Talk with us

You have a vision for your organization – don’t let your technology slow you down. Prolifics Security helps you architect and implement solutions by discussing and prioritizing your security requirements, as part of an overall security framework. Talk with us – let’s discuss your challenges, review and reevaluate your plans and get you started where it makes the most sense. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just our tagline, it’s what drives us. It’s how we deliver solutions and services. It’s our commitment to you – and it’s needed today more than ever. Visit prolifics.com or email solutions@prolifics.com.

About the author

Rob Adachi is Head of Security – Identity and Access for Prolifics and also leads a team of engineers implementing Tivoli security solutions for Fortune 500 companies. He has more than 20 years in the Identity Management field, starting with the early software development of the product that is now known as Tivoli Identity Manager (ITIM). Learn more about Rob here Identity and Access Management and Work-From-Home and reach him at Robert.Adachi@prolifics.com.