>> From around the globe.
It's theCUBE, with coverage
of KubeCon and Cloud NativeCon Europe 2020 Virtual,
brought to you by Red Hat,
the cloud native computing foundation
and the ecosystem partners.
>> Welcome back.
I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE coverage
of Kubecon, Cloud NativeCon Europe, 2020,
of course happening virtual this year.
We always love when we get to talk
to the practitioners in this community so much happening
in the developer space and really excited
to have on the program, first time guest
in a very timely topic, have welcomed Farbod Abolhassani
who is the backend lead for howsmyflattening,
which is a joint research project related to COVID-19,
associated with the University of Toronto.
Farbod, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Thank you.
>> Alright, so maybe explain how's my flattening
in the term flattening the curve is something
that I think everyone around the globe is familiar with now.
Canada, you've got some great initiatives going,
so help us understand how you got involved in this
and what is the project.
>> For sure.
So I'll take us back to March,
which now feels like years ago.
Back in March,
we could look across in Europe and we saw that,
I think as we're being overwhelmed,
this new COVID thing was happening
and there seems to be nothing happening here,
despite the fact that we know what was going on in Europe.
So this whole collaboration started
it's really the brainchild of Dr. Ben Fine
who's a radiologist that actually in health partners.
And the idea was why don't we put all the data
that is related to COVID,
for the Province of Ontario where I'm from
in one place, right?
So for the data minded people,
like a lot of people on this, program here
and for the data minded people of Ontario,
to be able to have the information they need
to make it (indistinct).
Targeted both the general public,
and at policy makers to really empower them
with the right tools.
We know the data is siloed in healthcare,
and we know,
when this whole thing started,
everything was on a website,
you would get a daily update,
but it wasn't something that you could analyze,
something you can use, really, it wasn't usable.
That's how everything kind of started as.
What if we did something about that?
What if we brought all the data in one place?
What if we visualize it and put all the resources
in one place?
And that was really this howsmyfattening.ca
which is an initiative that I got involved with
back in March.
And what we've been doing is building
a number of dashboards based on COVID data that are close
to real time as possible,
doing a number of analysis,
to answer specific questions and doing deep dives
into specific question.
We have a team of scientific experts
who are leadership, Dr. Ben Fine I mentioned earlier,
there's Dr. Laura Rosella who's the epidemiologist
out of the University of Toronto.
And then we have Dr. Ali Vahit Esensoy,
who's a data science lead, over (indistinct).
So we got this kind of, there's perfect organization
of the right talents required.
And we've been trying to tackle this COVID
and whatever we way we can by making the data transparent.
>> Yeah.
There've been a lot of initiatives obviously
that have had to accelerate really fast during this time.
It brings it tight a little bit.
How long did it take to spin the site up?
How do you make sure you're getting good data in,
who decides, which visualizations,
love to hear a little bit about,
how that has matured over the months
that you've had the project out there?
>> For sure.
So, when we started what people were doing out on Twitter,
really where this a lot of this activity was happening,
and people were grabbing spreadsheets
and typing out every day,
what was happening.
And I mean,
coming from, I'm not by any means the technical developer.
That's not what I specialize in,
but having some development background
it made sense that things could be done so much better.
So we started to build data pipelines starting in March.
We had a couple of government sources
that were public.
It was basically scrapping,
the government website and recording that in a database.
And then we start to visualize it,
we're using, whatever we could.
So we started with tableau just
because we had a few,
we were trying to build a community, right?
So a community of people who want to help
and do this.
So we have some tableau experts on our team
and our community,
and that's the way we went.
So we had the database,
we started to connect it to tableau
and sort of visualize it and start to do deep dives
into analysis of it.
And then the project has matured
from that web stopper ever since
with more complex data pipelines,
filling in data from different sources and visualizing them
in different ways
and expanding our dashboarding and expanding our now.
>> Well, and the KubeCon show
that we're here at is so much about community,
obviously open source is a major driver
of what's going on there.
So it sounded like that was,
that was a big piece of what you're working on,
help us bring inside.
How did, how did that community build?
We'd love to hear if there's any projects and tools.
So, you mentioned tableau for visualization,
but anything from open source also that you're using?
>> 100%, so actually I've never been involved
in open source project before this.
This was kind of my first attempt, if you will.
We started on get hub quite early on,
actually one of the partners that got involved
and reached out to us was Red Hat.
Of course they're known for doing open source
and for excelling at it,
and we have some amazing help from them
into how we can organize the community.
And we started to move the community over
from get hub, to get lab.
We started to, we collaborate,
in slack a lot of times, and there was a lot of silos.
So we started to break those down and move them
in to get logged in all conversations
that were happening in public.
They would be more closer to an open source approach.
And honestly, a lot of the people that are involved
are our students, grad students,
who want to help, people in the community
that want to help, people from all kinds
of different backgrounds.
I think we're really bringing in open source
is not a known concept in a lot of
these clinical scientific communities, right?
It's a lot more developer oriented.
And I think it's been a learning opportunity
for everyone involved.
Some things that may seem kind of default or basic
have been a big learning opportunity for everyone
of issue cha-ching and labeling and using comments
and not going back into our own old ways
of like emailing people or messaging people inbox.
But yeah, there's been a lot of tools involved get lots
of the big one.
We went from having this kind of monolith
to containerizing it and using Kubernetes,
of course, we developed,
with the help of Red Hat,
we were able to move everything over
to their OpenShift dedicated platform.
And that what that allowed us to do
is really do a lot of, do things a lot better
and do things in a bit more mature way.
Let's say that's quite a bit of information,
but that's kind of high level.
>> Well, now, it's great.
One of the things we've been poking out
for the last few years is,
in the early days if you talk about Kubernetes,
it was, oh, I need things at a scale.
And, while I'm sure that the amount of data
and scale is important, speed was a major piece
of what you needed to be involved in
and needed to be able to rally in dreams.
So, can you talk a little bit more,
just open shift,
what did that bring to the environment,
any aspects related to the data,
that Red Hat helped you with?
>> For sure, so a few things there,
the one thing that I OpenShift
I think really helped us with was really,
I mean, Red Hat to helped us move generally
with establishing a proper CICB pipeline.
Right?
So now we use Gil Lab itself.
We've Gil lab runners
that everyone basically all developers
involved have their own branches,
when they push code, it gets auto deployed to their branch,
and it just made everything a lot easier
and a lot faster to be able
to push things quickly without worrying
about everything breaking.
So that was definitely a big plus.
The other thing that we're doing with,
that is using containers actually,
we've been working on this open data hub,
which is, working on another great open source project,
which is again,
built on Kubernetes and trying to break down
some of the barriers when it comes to sharing data
in the healthcare system.
We're using that with the help of Red Hat,
we're able to deploy that,
to be able to collaborate between hospitals,
share data securely, do secure analytics,
and try to break down some of these silos
that I've gone up,
due to fears over security and privacy.
So that's another great example
of open source helping us kind of push things forward.
>> Well, that's,
I'm glad you brought that up.
The open data hub,
that collaboration with other places
when you're have data, being able to share that,
has to be important to talk.
This was a collaboration to start with,
what's the value of being able
to work with other groups
and to share your data beyond just the community
that's working on it.
>> For sure.
So if you think about what's happening right now
in a lot of hospitals in Canada,
and I mean, it's the same in the US
is everyone is in this reopening stage,
we shut down the economy,
we shut down a lot of elective surgeries
and a lot of procedures.
I know hospitals are trying to reopen, right?
So I'm trying to figure out how
to go back to their old capacity.
And in that sense,
they're all trying to solve for the same problem
in different ways.
So everyone is in their silos trying
to tackle the same problems in a way.
So what we're trying to do
is basically get everyone together
and collaborate on this open source environments, right?
And what this open data hub allows us to do
is to some degree alleviate some of the fears
over sharing data,
so that we're not all doing the same thing
in parallel or not talking to each other,
we're able to share code, share data,
get each other's opinions
and use new resources in the healthcare system
more efficient if we're,
all trying to reach the same goal here.
>> So I imagine you've had a lot of learnings
from this project that you've done.
Have you given any thought to,
once you get past that kind of the immediate hurdle
with COVID-19,
will this technology be able
to help you going forward?
What do you see, kind of post pandemic if you will.
>> I think the last piece I had touched on there
is a big thing that I'm really hoping we'll be able
to push forward past the pandemic.
I think what the pandemic has shown us
is the need for more transparency and more collaboration,
and being able to be more agile
and respond to things faster.
And that's not how healthcare operates,
and I think we know that now,
and we can see that,
and I'm hoping this can be used
as an opportunity to be able to bring people together,
to collaborate on projects like howsmyflatenning
on outside of this, right?
For not only the next pandemic, hopefully it never come.
But for other bigger problems that we face every day,
collaboration can only help things, not hinder things.
So I'm hoping that's one big side effect
that comes out of this.
And I think the data transparency thing
is another big one
that I'm hoping can improve outside of the COVID situation.
>> Yeah.
I wonder if I can ask you just a personal question.
We've heard certain organizations say that,
years of planning have been executed in months.
When I think about all the technologies
that you had thrown at,
you all the new things you learned,
often that's something that would have taken years,
but you did it in months.
So, how do you work through that?
There's only 24 hours in any day
and we do need some sleep.
So, what was important from your standpoint?
What, partners and tools, helped you and the team,
take advantage of all of these new technologies?
>> Yeah, honestly,
I think that the team is really, really important.
We've had an amazing set of people
that are quite diverse
and then usually would quite honestly,
never be seen in the same room together,
just because of all the different backgrounds
that are there.
So that was a big driver.
I think everyone was motivated,
to get things done.
What happened is when we first launched the site,
we put together a basic feedback mechanism
where we could hear from the public.
And we've got an outpouring of support
of people saying that they found
this information really useful.
And I think that pushed everyone to work harder
and it kind of reinforced our belief
that this is what we're doing is helpful
and is making a difference in someone's life.
And I think everyone, it helped everyone work harder.
In terms of some of the tools that we use,
yeah, I totally agree.
I think there was a million things that we all learned,
and it definitely was an amazing growing opportunity,
I think for the whole group.
I don't know if there's any wisdom I can impart there
more than I think we were just being pushed by the need
and being driven by the support that we're getting.
>> Yeah, well, when there's some necessity
to get things done,
it's great to see the team execute it.
The last question I have for you.
You've got all this data,
you've got visualizations,
you've been going through a lot of things,
any does interesting learnings that you had
or something that, were you able to visualize things
in a certain way,
and the community reacted,
just anything that you learned along the way
that maybe surprised you?
>> That's a really interesting question there.
I think the biggest learning opportunity
or surprise for me was
how much people are willing to help if you can just ask.
Right?
A lot of people involved,
I mean, this is a huge group of volunteers
who are just dedicating their time to this
because they believe in it.
And because they think they're doing the right thing
and they're doing it for a bigger cause
then I, it sounds very cheesy.
But I think that was wonderful to me to see
that we can bring together such diverse group of people
to dedicate their time for free to do something
for the public.
>> Yeah, well, and along the note
I see on the website,
there is a get involved button,
so is there anything, skillset or people
that you're looking for,
further to help the team?
>> 100%, so I think when I,
every time we do a presentation of any sort,
we always ask for anyone who's watching,
to just go on our site and get involved,
there's a million different things
that you can get involved with.
If you're a developer, we can always use help,
if you're a database person, we can always use help,
if you're a designer, honestly, there's,
we're community driven organization,
and we can always use more people in that community.
That's a unique thing about the organization.
So 100% please do to howsmyflatenning.ca
and please do get involved there and get loud.
>> Farbod, thank you so much for sharing.
We definitely encourage the community,
get involved into projects like this
that are so critically important,
especially right now during the pandemic.
Thanks so much for joining
and thank you for all the work you and the team did.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> All right.
And stay tuned, lots more covered
from KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2020 in Europe, Virtual edition.
I'm Stu Miniman.
And thank you for watching theCUBE.
(upbeat music)