PHIPA Alignment

PHIPA Compliance Statement

Smile Konnect equips Ontario dental groups with the controls they need to protect personal health information. This statement maps our safeguards to the administrative, technical, and physical standards required by the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA).

Last updated: November 17, 2025

Audit trails / year

100% captured

Data residency

Canada-only

Security incidents

0 reportable to date

1. Administrative safeguards

Governance, policy, and onboarding controls designed for multi-clinic deployments.

Role-based onboarding

Only verified clinics receive tenant spaces. Each user is tied to a clinic, role, and least-privilege permission set before activation.

  • Admin, dentist, and patient layouts enforce clear separation of duties
  • SessionManager and AuthContext seed local storage for demos but production deployments rely on JWT + refresh tokens

Policy controls

Consent definitions, export reason codes, and notification templates are versioned so clinics can demonstrate policy lineage during inspections.

Training & auditability

Every user interaction flows through AuditLoggingInterceptor, capturing user, IP, device metadata, and action context.

2. Technical safeguards

Encryption, RBAC, and service hardening built directly into the platform.

Encryption & secrets

Backend secrets live in environment files resolved via resolveEnvFilePaths(). AES-256 encryption protects data at rest, while TLS 1.3 secures traffic.

  • Key rotation handled via backend/scripts/generate-encryption-keys.js
  • Chat transcripts, uploads, and exports are checksum-validated before persisting

Access enforcement

Guards in backend/src/guards ensure JWT validation, throttling, and role-based permissions on every controller.

  • Multi-factor authentication flows for admins and dentists
  • Socket.IO chat gateway validates Authorization headers before establishing presence

Data minimization

API responses default to least-privilege projections and strip unnecessary identifiers from notifications and exports.

3. Physical & infrastructure safeguards

Canadian infrastructure, backups, and network segmentation keep PHI contained.

Canadian hosting footprint

Primary databases, object storage, and messaging queues run inside Canadian regions with redundant availability zones.

Backups & disaster recovery

Encrypted backups execute every 24 hours with 35-day retention and quarterly restore drills.

Network segmentation

Production networks isolate public endpoints from data stores; only hardened bastion hosts can reach database nodes.

4. Patient & clinic workflows

Operational workflows ensure privacy-by-design at every step.

Consent-first messaging

EnhancedConsentDialog enforces explicit consent for chat, file, and media actions. Consent records embed timestamps, staff IDs, and custom clinic text.

Exports & disclosures

Export Center requires users to specify purpose (patient request, IPC inquiry, legal) before generating files. Every export is logged with checksum and download status.

Incident-ready audit trails

Audit logs capture success/failure, payload hashes, and follow-up tasks so privacy officers can quickly respond to IPC reviews.

5. Incident response

Documented breach management aligned to IPC expectations.

Detection

Alerting rules watch for abnormal login velocity, bulk downloads, or consent bypass attempts. Alerts fan out to on-call engineering and clinic privacy contacts.

Containment & communication

If a breach occurs we isolate affected tenants, rotate credentials, and notify impacted clinics within 24 hours. Clinics receive templated guidance for notifying patients and regulators.

Post-incident reviews

Lessons learned are recorded in the data-lifecycle service with remediation owners, deadlines, and links to updated playbooks.

Need a formal attestation or security questionnaire? Contact privacy@smilekonnect.ca with your clinic name, requested documents, and deadlines.