Audit Record Repository

Audit Record Repository—A system unit that receives and collects audit records from multiple systems.

The Audit Record Repository is especially important to meet the requirements for patient information privacy as prescribed by the HIPAA regulation. Exchanges and access to this information that is outside the scope of regular treatment, planning or healthcare operations, should be registered in an audit trail that can be regularly inspected. This feature can actually reside in any part of the system, however, if present in the RIS, for example, it must also be accessible from the PACS. A central audit repository makes sense, instead of multiple audit trails for each individual system. IHE specifies the exchange protocol between individual devices that collect the audit trail information and the repository.