3.1 Auditing in OpenEMR

Auditing in OpenEMR

This section describes about the auditing in OpenEMR. This comprises of two tasks.

1. Enhancing the logging functionality in OpenEMR

2. Providing an "Audit Trail" GUI

The events to be audited as per CCHIT requirements are given below:

1. start/stop 

2. User login/logout 

3. Session timeout 

4. Account lockout 

5. Patient record created/viewed/updated/deleted 

6. Scheduling 

7. Query 

8. Order 

9. node-authentication failure 

10. Signature created/validated 

11. PHI export (e.g. print) 

12. PHI import 

13. Security administration events 

14. Backup and restore

Log Format to be used

Date - Sys-date with time

Component - Acutal module/event for which the log is meant for

Type of event - Insert/Update/Delete/Query/Others

User Name - Name of the user who performs the task

Client certificate Name

Patient ID - Patient Identifier

Status - Success or Failure

Checksum - checksum for the current record

Description - SQL Queries passed/Other descriptions

The existing table 'log' is modified to hold the above information

Tasks involved

• a. Option to Enable/Disable the audit events

The following configurations are added in globals.php

   $GLOBALS["enable_auditlog"] = 1;
   $GLOBALS["audit_events"] = array("patient-record"=>1,
                                "scheduling"=>1,
                                "query"=>1,
                                "order"=>1,
                                "security-administration"=>1,
                                "backup"=>1,
                               );

Note: The events which were already logged by openemr are logged by default.

• b. Logging all the events mentioned above (Logging database calls - high priority)

Most of the database calls are passed through functions [sqlInsert,sqlQuery,sqlStatement,sqlQ] mentioned in sql.inc. Log function are called from these functions.

Calls from php-gacl and postnuke calander are also logged by modifying their own adodb mysql driver functions.

Note: The scope of this task doesn't include changing the existing business logic used for update [Currently, even if a single field is used, all the data elements are passed through the update statement]

• c. "Audit Trail" Gui - Enhancing the existing "Administration->Other->Logs (Logs Viewer)" to accomodate all the auditing events

Sample Screen

This is just a sample screen shot. More features (like start date and end date) & more events need to be included.

Links

• Associated with Sourceforge forum thread: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openemr/forums/forum/202506/topic/3500441

Status

Implementation completed.