Your clinicians and admin staff are using AI tools. Is PHI protected?
AI scribes, clinical documentation tools, and consumer AI are widely used in healthcare — often without BAAs, IT approval, or compliance review. Aona discovers Shadow AI, prevents PHI from entering unapproved tools, and generates the audit trail HIPAA requires.
HIPAA was not written for AI — but its requirements apply fully to how AI tools handle PHI.
Any vendor that processes, stores, or transmits Protected Health Information (PHI) on behalf of a covered entity must sign a Business Associate Agreement. Standard consumer AI tools — including ChatGPT, standard Google Workspace AI, and most AI scribes — do not come with a BAA by default and should not be used with PHI.
HIPAA's minimum necessary standard requires that covered entities limit PHI access to only what is required for the specific purpose. When employees use AI tools, this standard applies — asking an AI to process a full patient record when only a diagnosis code is needed creates unnecessary PHI exposure.
The HIPAA Security Rule requires technical security measures to record and examine access to PHI. This includes AI tools that access, process, or generate PHI. Without audit controls in place, organisations cannot demonstrate HIPAA compliance or investigate breaches involving AI.
HIPAA requires administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect PHI. As AI tools become part of clinical and administrative workflows, these safeguards must extend to AI-generated outputs, AI prompts containing PHI, and any data stored or transmitted by AI services.
Clinical and administrative staff are adopting AI tools rapidly — often faster than IT and compliance can review them. These tools frequently access PHI without the safeguards HIPAA requires.
Clinical documentation AI tools are widely adopted by clinicians looking to reduce documentation burden. Many are used without IT review, BAAs in place, or data residency checks.
AI-assisted note-taking, discharge summaries, and prior authorisation tools frequently process full patient records — often deployed at the department level without central oversight.
Radiology AI, pathology AI, and clinical decision support tools may be evaluated or adopted by clinical teams before IT and compliance have assessed their HIPAA posture.
Purpose-built AI security that addresses the HIPAA compliance challenges of healthcare AI adoption.
Aona maps every AI tool in use across your healthcare organisation — including tools used by clinical staff, administrative teams, and external contractors. Get a complete inventory of AI tools accessing or processing PHI.
Aona's real-time DLP rules detect PHI in AI prompts before they are submitted — and block or redact that data when it is destined for a tool without a BAA or outside your approved tool list.
Every AI interaction involving potential PHI is logged with full context. Generate audit reports that map AI tool usage to HIPAA audit control requirements — ready for OCR review or breach investigation.
Define which AI tools are approved for use with PHI, which staff roles can access them, and what data classifications are permitted. Policies are applied automatically and updated in real time as your approved tool list changes.
Discover Shadow AI, prevent PHI exposure, and generate the audit trail HIPAA requires — all from one platform. We sign BAAs.