Gavin Ritchie
IT Director
Gavin spent his previous career in software development and database design in a variety of employed and independent roles. Development activities for Life Insurance systems proved a launching pad to a collaboration with Stephen Richards, and the Longevitas application suite was born. Alongside steering the IT function, Gavin is the primary developer for database, Java and web-related technologies.
Articles written by Gavin Ritchie
Deadly parallels
Ever since the unhappy arrival of the SARS-COV-2 virus, COVID-19 and influenza have been compared for a multiplicity of reasons.
Orders of magnitude
At the beginning of April, the MHRA published an analysis of vaccine safety reports in the UK and concluded that despite now finding increased evidence of rare blood clots following administration of AZD1222 from AstraZeneca (consistent with previous reports from Europe) the benefits of vaccination still outweigh the risks.
'E' is for evidence
Our battle with COVID-19 has raised many questions around the evidence base for proposed public health interventions.
Separation as a service
During the current Covid-19 pandemic, and in common with many service providers, we're dealing with support requests from users working at home. This isn't a huge upheaval for us, since we've always been a SaaS provider, and SaaS is intrinsically decentralised.
The sound of progress
A while back we discussed the important role existing licensed medications could play when applied to the diseases of aging. A comparable discussion can be had about existing non-drug interventions and treatments, such as, in this case the venerable ultrasound.
Immune response
The resurgence of measles in Europe signals something of a confidence crisis in the area of vaccination, and not for the first time. Mass panics of this sort are not new, but the reach of modern hysteria is aided by technology.
One (more) time passcodes
Passwords seldom stand alone in modern applications, and for good reason. Perhaps they might be guessed or leak or otherwise be broken, so it is a bad idea to make them the only line of defence. This is why multi-factor authentication (MFA) is modern best practice.
All about the base(line)
When we first developed a technique for putting longevity trend risk into a 1-in-200 framework consistent with Solvency II, we sought to accommodate model risk by supporting a wide range of stochastic projection models.
Auditing firewalls
In a recent blog I discussed the security improvements brought by changing our certification authority, but that isn't our only recent change.
Resetting certificates
Web site certification supports the key exchange enabling secure encrypted communication between browser clients and server applications. This is why industry giant Google launched a campaign in 2014 that all web applications should use a browser-recognised certificate authority (CA) and offer encrypted access.