I've been tasked with finding an LLM solution for a healthcare client. While exploring options, the main challenge has been balancing cost and compliance. HIPAA-compliant services often come with a hefty price tag. For example, we've looked into some Azure services that allow managed LLMs but the added HIPAA layer dramatically increases costs. Are there any open-source models or community-hosted solutions that can cut costs while still offering a path to HIPAA compliance through custom hosting setups? Looking forward to some creative solutions!
I've been in a similar situation with healthcare projects. Using open-source models like GPT-2 or GPT-J with self-hosting on AWS can be a good starting point. You’ll need to handle the compliance part by ensuring your infrastructure is set up securely, but it could save a ton money compared to managed services.
Has anyone tried implementing a hybrid approach where sensitive data is processed on a HIPAA-compliant infrastructure, but non-sensitive operations use cheaper, non-compliant resources? I'm curious if the segmentation complexity is worth it.
I'd recommend taking a look at what Hugging Face offers with their Inference API. They have some governance controls, though you'll still need to ensure overall compliance on the infrastructure side if you self-host. Short-term investment in building a compliant setup could pay off in the long run!
In our deployment using Azure, adding a HIPAA layer increased operational costs by about 30%. We justified it by reallocating some budget usually reserved for customer onboarding since having compliant services became a selling point.
You might want to explore the option of running a local instance with a secure VPN and strong encryption. This is what we did in a similar situation, and while it required initial setup, it allowed us a better cost handle long-term compared to fully managed solutions.
