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Information Technology Module

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Week 1 Individual Work Checklist

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CS-000: Interoperability Introduction

An introduction to interoperability as a form of communication and an explanation of the need for immunization information systems (IIS) to follow standards.

A: Interoperability is Communication
The idea of interoperability can seem quite different from day-to-day activities that humans engage in, but once you start to compare interoperability with communication, you will see that many of the difficulties and paradoxes we face in human communication are also encountered in computer system interoperability.

B: Why IIS Need Standards
Implementing standards has been a decades-long journey for IIS, and we have learned from good and hard experience the need for the adoption of standards. You will learn some of the lessons gleaned from when IIS implemented the CDC IG r1.5 in the 2010s.

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CS-101: Information Technology

This week's objective is to provide a basic understanding of how information is encoded digitally for both transmission and storage. You will learn that all digital data is essentially a series of numbers that work together to represent letters, words, colors, sound, pictures, and even software applications. Next, you will be shown how this digital data is represented in hex form and then grouped into bytes, kilobytes, and megabytes. At the end you should be able to convert data from binary to hex to American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text and back again.

A: Digital Data
You will learn that all digital data is essentially a set of numbers. This will be demonstrated by an introduction to the Red Green Blue (RGB) color scheme that is used for colors on webpages and computer monitors. The hands-on exercise will help you understand that even apparently non-numerical concepts, such as color, can be effectively described by a set of finite numbers.

Exercise

Visit the websites below to explore how the RGB color scheme works:

Notice how each website gives you codes that start with a pound (#) sign, which indicates a specific RGB-defined color. These are three sets of two-digit numbers that represent the amount of red, green, and blue (in that order). Create your own colors by entering numbers of your own and see what colors you can make.

Please answer these questions:

  • What is the RGB number for the color green? #_ _ _ _ _ _
  • What is the RGB number for your favorite color? #_ _ _ _ _ _

Additional Content

Maybe you don’t think of the words "spreadsheets" and "funny" in the same sentence, but Matt Parker from Stand-up Maths has a sketch that shows how numbers can be turned into colors.

B: Binary Basic

At the very lowest level, a computer counts all numbers by two. This binary system may seem a bit strange at first but is foundational to properly understanding any digital data you are looking at. Every single piece of digital data is encoded in binary format, but you rarely ever see it because computers are sophisticated enough to represent this in forms humans better understand. We will pull back the covers and show you how a computer counts numbers using binary.

Exercise

Visit this website and play around with numbers to see how they are represented in binary:

Scroll down the page and you will see a detailed explanation of how binary numbers can be calculated by humans. Spend enough time on this page until you feel comfortable with the conversion of numbers 0 to 15 into binary format.

Please answer these questions:

  • What binary number is one more than binary 1011?
  • What binary number is one less than binary 1000?

C: Bits & Bytes

Here we introduce hex numbers, which are essentially an easier way for humans to write down binary numbers. Binary numbers are very long and tedious to write, but their hex representation is more practical. Hex is also the form that you will often see in technical situations. Becoming more comfortable with them will help you be less afraid to use them when you see them.

Exercise (optional)

Here is a fun game that helps you get an intuitive understanding for how binary works:

Start with the Novice and try to work to Beginner. The higher the level, the bigger the numbers they try to get you to make. This game is essentially getting you to convert a regular number to binary. You will get a window into how a computer represents and stores numbers.

D: Encoding Text

You will learn that numbers can be used to represent letters, and that the text you see on a computer screen is also just a set of numbers that the computer represents to you as text. The original system for representing text with numbers was called the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII).Think of it as HL7 interoperability for computers/machines in the 1970s that exchanged data with printers and keyboards. Technically, ASCII is not used in modern systems, but the codes it defined are grandfathered in to our modern text standards. Furthermore, HL7 Version 2 (V2) messages are built on top of this standard, so understanding ASCII is critical to mastering HL7 V2 messages.

Exercise

Visit this website and practice converting between text and binary:

You will notice how long and tedious the binary output is. However, this represents the strengths and weaknesses of computers. At a fundamental level, they only think in binary ways, but because they can calculate and handle large amounts of tedious information without making mistakes, this can be used to support very sophisticated processes.

Please answer this question:

  • What is your name in binary?

Exercise (optional)

Try converting decimal numbers into text and back into numbers using Excel:

Additional Content

It is very important to grasp what ASCII text is as well as what the HL7 V2 and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards are built on top of. Tom Scott provides commentary on various technical concepts related to the internet and provides a short explanation of how to read text from binary:

You may also be interested in this article about how text data was encoded on a parachute used during the latest Mars rover landing. As you can see, engineers think putting words in binary is fun! Once you can understand how it works, you can better connect to technically minded people.

*Videos are password protected. Registered students will receive the password.