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Audit Logs

Every healthcare platform faces a fundamental challenge: how do you prove who accessed what data, when they accessed it, and what they did with it? In environments governed by HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2, this isn't just good practice—it's a legal requirement. The Audit Logs module provides comprehensive observability across every user action, system process, and data access event within Patient Journey Intelligence, creating an immutable record that supports regulatory compliance, security investigations, and operational transparency.

Audit Logs Overview

This video demonstrates the interface visually without audio narration.

Understanding the Audit Dashboard​

When you open the Audit Logs interface, the dashboard immediately surfaces the metrics that matter for security and compliance oversight. At the top, summary cards show the total number of logged events in your selected timeframe, how many actions completed successfully, how many resulted in failures, and how many were initiated directly by users versus automated system processes.

These high-level indicators give administrators and compliance teams instant visibility into platform health and access patterns. A sudden spike in failures might indicate an integration issue or attempted unauthorized access. Unusual patterns in client actions could reveal suspicious behavior worth investigating. The dashboard turns raw log data into actionable intelligence at a glance.

With thousands or even millions of audit events logged over time, finding specific information requires powerful filtering capabilities. The Audit Logs module provides multi-dimensional query tools that let you zero in on exactly the events you need, whether you're conducting a security investigation, preparing for a compliance audit, or troubleshooting an operational issue.

Filter by User and Entity​

Need to trace every action taken by a specific user? Filter by User ID to see all activities associated with that person's account—invaluable for access reviews, insider risk investigations, or demonstrating that terminated employees no longer have access. Filter by Entity ID to track what happened to a specific patient record, cohort, document, or other resource, creating a complete audit trail for that data element.

Filter by Action and Entity Type​

Narrow your search by the type of operation performed. Action Type filters let you focus on specific activities like VIEW, CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE, EXPORT, LOGIN, and LOGOUT operations. Combine this with Entity Type filters to answer questions like "Who exported patient data in the last month?" or "What documents were deleted this week?" This combination of filters makes compliance reporting straightforward—generate a list of all data exports, track changes to sensitive cohorts, or document who viewed protected health information.

Filter by Source and Status​

Understanding how users interact with the platform requires knowing where actions originated. The Source filter distinguishes between UI interactions (users working through the web interface), API calls (programmatic access via integrations), and System operations (automated background processes). This helps you understand usage patterns and identify potential security concerns—are API calls coming from expected systems, or is there unexpected programmatic access?

The Status filter separates successful operations from failures, helping you quickly identify problems. Clustering failures around a specific time might indicate a system outage. Repeated failed login attempts from a single user could signal a compromised account or someone forgetting their credentials.

Time-Based Investigation​

Every investigation or audit has a temporal dimension. The Date Range filter lets you define start and end timestamps, focusing your analysis on specific periods. Investigating a reported security incident on a particular date? Set the range to that 24-hour window. Preparing quarterly compliance reports? Filter to the three-month reporting period. This temporal filtering is essential for timeline reconstruction and trend analysis.

Working with Filtered Results​

Once you've configured your filters, the interface provides simple tools to manage your view. Apply Filters refreshes the log display with your criteria. Reset clears all filters to return to the complete log view. Most importantly, Export lets you download the filtered dataset as CSV or JSON, essential for regulatory reporting, security analysis, or sharing findings with auditors and compliance teams.

Reading the Audit Trail​

The audit log table presents filtered events in a structured, sortable format designed for both human review and automated analysis. Each row represents a single logged event, with columns providing the context needed for compliance verification, security investigation, and operational troubleshooting.

Timestamp shows the precise local time when each event occurred, critical for timeline reconstruction and correlation with other security events. User identifies who performed the action—whether a named user with email and system identifier, or "System" for automated processes. Action describes what operation was performed, while Entity indicates what type of resource was affected.

Source tells you where the action originated—UI for interactive web sessions, API for programmatic integrations, or System for background processes. Status provides immediate visual feedback with color coding: green for SUCCESS, red for FAILURE. Duration captures how long the operation took in milliseconds, valuable not just for performance monitoring but sometimes for security analysis—unusually long data exports might indicate bulk data exfiltration.

The Description column contains rich metadata including API endpoints, operation parameters, and error messages when applicable. This additional context often proves essential during investigations, providing the details needed to understand exactly what happened and why an operation succeeded or failed.

This structured log format ensures you can demonstrate compliance traceability while maintaining the operational diagnostic depth needed for troubleshooting and optimization.

Exporting for Compliance and Analysis​

The ability to export filtered audit logs transforms raw system data into actionable evidence for multiple stakeholders and purposes.

Regulatory Compliance​

Healthcare organizations face constant audit requirements. Export filtered logs to provide HIPAA audit trails demonstrating appropriate access controls, GDPR data subject access records showing all interactions with specific individuals' data, SOC 2 evidence collection documenting security monitoring and access governance, or clinical trial data access audits proving protocol compliance and data integrity.

Security Forensics​

When security incidents occur, comprehensive audit logs become your primary investigation tool. Export relevant time periods to investigate unauthorized access attempts, reconstruct breach timelines showing exactly what data was accessed and when, or detect access pattern anomalies that might indicate compromised credentials or insider threats.

Performance and Operations​

Beyond security and compliance, audit logs reveal operational patterns. Export and analyze API usage to understand integration load and optimize rate limits. Identify system latency issues by examining operation duration trends. Guide resource optimization by understanding which operations consume the most time and system resources.

Data Governance​

Institutional policies often mandate specific audit log retention and archival schedules. Regular exports ensure you maintain historical records according to your governance framework, even as the active audit database rolls over older entries to manage storage.

Common Use Cases by Role​

Different stakeholders use audit logs for different purposes, each bringing their own perspective and requirements to the data.

Security and Compliance Teams​

Access Control Audits validate that role-based access controls work as designed, ensuring users can only access data appropriate to their roles.

Regulatory Reporting delivers structured, filtered logs directly to auditors, demonstrating compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, and other frameworks.

Breach Investigation traces unauthorized access attempts or unusual data access patterns, helping security teams understand incident scope and impact.

Operations and IT Teams​

Failure Root-Cause Analysis pinpoints error sources by examining clusters of failed operations, helping operations teams identify and resolve system issues.

Latency Monitoring tracks operation duration over time, identifying long-running or degraded processes before they impact users.

Workflow Debugging analyzes chains of user or system events to understand complex multi-step processes and identify where things go wrong.

Quality Assurance and Governance​

Data Governance monitoring tracks data manipulation operations, ensuring data quality processes are followed and documenting who modified what data and when.

Process Auditing tracks platform changes like cohort definitions, ontology updates, and configuration modifications, supporting change control and quality management.

Change Management documents and verifies that configuration changes follow approved processes with appropriate authorization.

Interpreting Patterns and Anomalies​

Raw audit logs tell you what happened. Pattern analysis tells you what it means. Certain patterns in audit data reveal underlying issues that require attention.

High Failure Rates​

When you see elevated failure rates, investigate potential causes: API schema mismatches between integrated systems, user access issues caused by role misconfigurations or expired credentials, broken integrations with external data sources, or authentication problems preventing legitimate access. A sudden spike in failures often indicates a specific technical problem with a clear solution.

High Duration Events​

Operations taking longer than expected might reflect latency in backend services or external dependencies, resource contention when multiple users access the same data simultaneously, or query and indexing inefficiencies requiring database optimization. Tracking duration trends over time helps you identify performance degradation before it becomes user-visible.

Usage Insights​

Audit logs reveal behavioral patterns invisible from individual user perspectives. Identify peak system activity windows to optimize backup schedules and maintenance windows. Understand background job schedules to avoid resource conflicts. Recognize user and API behavioral patterns to inform capacity planning. Track dataset access frequencies to optimize caching and data locality.

Enterprise Integration​

Audit logs from Patient Journey Intelligence don't exist in isolation—they're part of your broader security and compliance ecosystem. The module integrates seamlessly with enterprise security tools and workflows.

Feed audit data into SIEM Platforms like Splunk, Azure Sentinel, or Elastic SIEM for correlation with security events from other systems, enabling holistic threat detection and incident response. Connect to Centralized Logging infrastructure for multi-system monitoring, aggregating logs from all healthcare applications in a single searchable repository. Configure Alerting Systems that trigger on specific failure patterns or suspicious access, enabling real-time incident detection rather than retrospective discovery. Build Compliance Dashboards via API or CSV integration, providing executives and audit committees with up-to-date compliance metrics without manual report generation.

This integration capability ensures Patient Journey Intelligence audit data contributes to enterprise-wide risk mitigation and proactive security monitoring.

Best Practices for Audit Log Management​

Effective audit log use requires discipline and planning. Establish a rhythm of regular log reviews—weekly for security-focused organizations, monthly for compliance-focused teams—creating cadence that catches issues before they escalate. Track high-risk accounts by monitoring privileged user activity, ensuring administrators and users with broad data access don't abuse their permissions. Configure smart filters that you reuse for repeat queries, saving time on common compliance reports and security checks.

Archive audit logs periodically according to your retention policy, balancing the need for historical data against storage costs and query performance. When you see clusters of failure events, investigate the pattern rather than dismissing individual errors—correlated failures often indicate systemic problems. Validate duration outliers by flagging operations that take significantly longer than average, as these often reveal performance bottlenecks worth addressing.

Why Comprehensive Audit Logs Matter​

In healthcare technology, trust is everything. Patients trust you with their most sensitive information. Regulators trust you to handle it appropriately. Your institution trusts you to demonstrate compliance and maintain security. The Audit Logs module provides the evidence that validates this trust.

By capturing every user action, system process, and data access event with complete context and immutable timestamps, you create an authoritative record of everything that happens in Patient Journey Intelligence. This record supports regulatory compliance by providing the audit trails required by HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, and institutional governance frameworks. It enables security oversight by making unauthorized access visible and suspicious patterns detectable. It ensures operational transparency by documenting how your platform is actually used, not how you assume it's used.

Audit logs are your platform's memory—the permanent record that turns transient actions into documented history. When auditors ask questions, you have answers. When security incidents occur, you have evidence. When users raise concerns, you have facts. The Audit Logs module doesn't just record what happened—it provides the foundation for accountability, stewardship, and trust within the Patient Journey Intelligence ecosystem.

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