PHIPA Compliance Statement
Smile Konnect equips Ontario dental teams with the administrative, technical, and physical controls needed to protect personal health information. This statement maps our safeguards directly to the standards established under the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA).
Audit trails captured
100% of requests
Data residency
Canada-only
Reportable incidents
0 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
E-signature consent workflows enforce explicit consent for chat, file, and media actions. Consent records embed timestamps, staff IDs, audit trails, and signed PDFs.
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.