Introducing Sapio DevOps

A Q&A with Oliver Greenaway, head of DevOps at Sapio Sciences

DevOps is critical to customer success and the success of the Sapio Informatics platform by enabling rapid, reliable, and secure software delivery through continuous integration and deployment, ensuring compliance, scalability, and operational efficiency in an ever-evolving clinical and research environment.

In this Q&A, we interviewed Oliver Greenaway, head of DevOps at Sapio Sciences. The head of DevOps oversees the integration of development and operations teams, ensuring smooth communication, standardized environments, and continuous delivery of high-quality, scalable software while embedding security, monitoring, and regulatory compliance into every stage of the software lifecycle.

Here’s what he had to say:

Question: What is the head of DevOps, and why is it an important role?

Answer: DevOps combines practices and tools that marry software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the software development lifecycle and continuously deliver a high-quality product. A critical component of what I do is to ensure both the development and production environments are standardized, scalable, and resilient. I work to ensure clear communication happens among developers and our operations team.

Question: How does DevOps contribute to data security daily?

Answer: DevOps practices ensure that data is encrypted both while being transferred (data in transit) and while being stored (data at rest). This encryption protects sensitive information from getting intercepted or accessed by unauthorized parties. We implement role-based access control (RBAC), whitelisting, and firewalls to limit unauthorized access. By embedding security into CI/CD pipelines, DevOps enables continuous monitoring and immediate response to potential threats, ensuring compliance with industry standards such as SOC 2 Type 2 and regulatory frameworks like HIPAA and GDPR, maintaining high levels of data protection.

Question: How challenging is keeping up with an ever-changing healthcare and research environment?

Answer: There’s a constant evolution of workflows, technology, instruments, and regulatory requirements. Thankfully, Sapio’s lab informatics platform is modular; it’s also malleable, meaning we can easily adapt to these changes. Unlike traditional LIMS platforms that require intricate HL7 connections and complex coding to connect physician portals, instruments, and other operational systems, our platform allows for seamless integration without the need for extensive technical expertise on the customer side. This flexibility not only accelerates the deployment of new features and integrations but also makes adapting to changes much easier, allowing us to stay ahead in a dynamic environment while ensuring compliance and operational efficiency.

Question: In what ways does DevOps contribute to ensuring our platform’s reliability and availability?

Answer: We deploy a robust Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system that aggregates and analyzes security-related data and logs from various sources in real-time, helping us detect, respond to, and prevent cybersecurity threats and reliability issues. This centralization of data allows for comprehensive monitoring and analysis. These tools ensure organizations meet regulatory compliance requirements by generating reports and maintaining audit trails. Sapio also supports standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC-2 by tracking and documenting security events.

Question: Can you describe your role in ensuring quick and seamless updates to the platform’s software?

Answer: DevOps oversees the integration, testing, and deployment processes, ensuring any changes or updates are quickly and safely moved into production. This reduces the time to market for new features, allowing for rapid iteration and innovation. Additionally, DevOps practices provide continuous monitoring and automated issue detection, which helps maintain high reliability and uptime, ensuring that the platform performs optimally.

Question: What’s your favorite part of working at Sapio Sciences?

Answer: My favorite part of working at Sapio is the incredible level of expertise and experience that everyone brings to the table. This high caliber of talent allows us to iterate and grow rapidly, continuously improving our offerings. One of the reasons we resonate with so many labs, whether in clinical or research settings, is our modular, low-code, no-code platform. It enables us to build customized, end-to-end solutions in record time, meeting diverse needs efficiently and effectively. This adaptability and speed make our work incredibly rewarding and impactful. It’s nice to see things work how they should work – every day!