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I recently went through setting up a HIPAA compliant web app. The team is small and has no dedicated DevOps so I went looking for a PaaS solution. After extensi

by dyeje 8y ago

I recently went through setting up a HIPAA compliant web app. The team is small and has no dedicated DevOps so I went looking for a PaaS solution. After extensive researching and trialing, I went with Healthcare Blocks. They provide a great experience and were the only company that offered a sane price point for an early stage startup. Honorable mention to Aptible, especially their Gridiron product that we will eventually use. I think another viable route is hiring a contractor to build out your environment for you. We got a quote from an AWS contractor and it was reasonable for our setup, but ultimately we really wanted a PaaS. Unless you’re an expert in HIPAA and the cloud platform you’re looking at, it’s not something I would recommend tackling on your own. Remember that there are a lot of non-tech parts of compliance to consider as well such as training, physical security, security assessments, etc.

boltzmannbrain 8y ago
Thanks I'll definitely look into these! In your research and trialing did you compare TrueVault (mentioned in other comments). Digging around today I'm rather impressed, but haven't tried anything yet. And if you don't mind, what do you consider a "sane price point"? I'm assuming that price is relatively small compared to the actual AWS hosting fees you pay on top of the PaaS, no?
- dyeje 8y ago
  I didn't try TrueVault because I didn't want to integrate it into an existing application. Certainly seems like an option worth exploring if you're into it. For HIPAA compliant hosting, I would say a sane price point is below $1000 a month for a single server and database. Only Healthcare Blocks, Aptible, and EngineYard came in below that. Other providers like Heroku and Datica started around $3000 a month. With Healthcare Blocks the monthly cost is all in, there are no additional hosting fees. That said, for a small app hosting fees are small. The AWS consultants forecasted the actual server costs around $200 for the year I believe.
amorphous 8y ago
Any tips on how to find an AWS contractor who can do this?

by dyeje 8y ago

boltzmannbrain 8y ago

Thanks I'll definitely look into these! In your research and trialing did you compare TrueVault (mentioned in other comments). Digging around today I'm rather impressed, but haven't tried anything yet. And if you don't mind, what do you consider a "sane price point"? I'm assuming that price is relatively small compared to the actual AWS hosting fees you pay on top of the PaaS, no?

dyeje 8y ago
I didn't try TrueVault because I didn't want to integrate it into an existing application. Certainly seems like an option worth exploring if you're into it. For HIPAA compliant hosting, I would say a sane price point is below $1000 a month for a single server and database. Only Healthcare Blocks, Aptible, and EngineYard came in below that. Other providers like Heroku and Datica started around $3000 a month. With Healthcare Blocks the monthly cost is all in, there are no additional hosting fees. That said, for a small app hosting fees are small. The AWS consultants forecasted the actual server costs around $200 for the year I believe.

amorphous 8y ago

Any tips on how to find an AWS contractor who can do this?