SOC 2 Compliance for Clinical AI

The Challenge: AI in Healthcare Creates New Compliance Complexity

Traditional SOC 2 audits didn't anticipate AI systems that autonomously process, store, and generate clinical data. When your clinical AI assistants handle patient conversations, retrieve medical records, and generate summaries, you face questions your auditor may not have asked before:

How do you prove what patient data an AI assistant accessed during a clinical conversation?
When a retention policy deletes clinical conversations containing PHI, how do you document that deletion?
If an AI processes protected health information, how do you ensure proper disposal?

ChatMD eliminates that uncertainty by building SOC 2 controls directly into the platform.

Trust Services Criteria Coverage

C1.2: Confidential Information Disposal

"The entity disposes of confidential information to meet the entity's objectives related to confidentiality."

Clinical AI assistants process confidential patient information across multiple touchpoints: clinician queries, medical record retrieval, lab result analysis, and response generation.

Automated Retention Enforcement

ChatMD allows you to configure retention policies per healthcare organization and department for:

Clinical conversations — AI-assisted discussions containing patient information
Audit logs — Records of PHI access
Patient documents — Uploaded medical records and clinical notes

Retention cleanup runs automatically. When data reaches its retention limit, it is securely deleted and the deletion is permanently documented for audit evidence.

Disposal Documentation

Every deletion generates a permanent record that your auditor can review to verify:

Disposal occurred according to your documented policy
No PHI was retained beyond the defined period
The disposal process is consistent and automated

P5.1: Data Retention

"The entity retains personal information consistent with the entity's objectives related to privacy."

Clinical AI conversations frequently contain protected health information—patient names, diagnoses, medications, and treatment plans. ChatMD ensures this data is retained only as long as necessary while meeting healthcare record retention requirements.

Configurable Retention Periods

Set retention at the organization level for baseline policy, then override at the department level for specific requirements. For example:

Emergency Medicine — Standard 7-year retention
Pediatrics — Extended 20-year retention for minor patients
Research — 10-year retention per research protocol requirements

Legal Hold Integration

When retention policy conflicts with preservation requirements, legal holds take precedence. Data subject to litigation, regulatory investigation, subpoena, or internal investigation is excluded from automated retention until the hold is released.

Retention Tracking

Each retention cleanup execution is logged, including counts of what was deleted, what was archived, and what was skipped due to legal holds. This provides explicit evidence that legal preservation requirements override automated retention.

Implementation Checklist

Define retention policies aligned with state medical record retention laws
Configure department-level overrides where clinical requirements differ
Document retention periods in your information security policy
Establish process for creating legal holds when preservation is required
Schedule regular review of retention history
Export deletion records for audit evidence package

SOC2