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Audit Log

An audit log records system activity such as access, changes, user actions, and workflow events.

technicalPublished 2026/06/11Last verified 2026/07/17

Healthcare compliance context

This definition is for healthcare technology research and is not security, legal, or compliance advice.

An audit log records activity inside a system, such as who accessed data, what changed, when an event happened, and which workflow step was taken. In healthcare AI tools, audit logs are important for PHI access, generated output, user edits, exceptions, and compliance review.

Buyers should verify what events are logged, how long logs are retained, who can review them, and whether logs are exportable for audits.

Application scenario: In workflow review, this term helps teams map a vendor claim to the care setting, data flow, integration point, user handoff, and oversight step where it applies. Procurement impact: Buyers should evaluate evidence, interoperability effort, security and privacy controls, pricing assumptions, support, and compliance responsibilities before shortlisting or contracting for a tool that depends on this capability.

Sources and review notes

These links support definition-level research and do not establish the regulatory status, safety, or suitability of any product.

NIST SP 800-92 provides enterprise guidance for generating, transmitting, storing, accessing, analyzing, and disposing of computer security logs. The HIPAA Security Rule at 45 CFR 164.312(b) requires applicable covered entities and business associates to implement mechanisms that record and examine activity in information systems containing or using electronic protected health information. ONC's specific Health IT Certification Program criterion for audit reports requires a certified module within that criterion's scope to create reports for a selected time period and sort audit-log entries using referenced data elements. These sources do not prescribe one universal event schema, retention period, review frequency, or control set for every healthcare AI product, and an ONC criterion applies only within its certification scope. Teams must define events and identities, timestamps and time synchronization, patient and object identifiers, successful and failed access, privilege and configuration changes, exports, prompts and outputs where appropriate, human edits, integration and support activity, tamper resistance, access separation, encryption, retention and deletion, searchable export, alerting, review ownership, incident correlation, clock and ingestion failure handling, and contractually available evidence.

FAQs

What should an AI tool audit log include?
Buyers should ask about user access, generated outputs, edits, exports, failed actions, admin changes, and retention.

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