How to Archive Medical Records Securely

Cyber threats are looming. Regulations like HIPAA and GDPR are tightening. Secure archiving of medical records is more critical than ever. Medical records containing sensitive patient data are the lifeblood of healthcare. It demands an ironclad protection. Safeguarding these records while keeping them accessible is a balancing act.

Is Secure Archiving Important For Medical Records?

“We have upgraded to a new EMR platform. What should we do with all the old patient records?”

Every healthcare organization faces this question when modernizing its healthcare systems. As a healthcare provider, whether you are migrating from on-prem to cloud, merging with or acquiring another hospital group, or simply retiring outdated legacy systems, one thing remains essential. Medical records must be securely, compliantly, and accessibly archived.

Healthcare enterprises have been accumulating a huge amount of patient data. Often spanning decades, this data is sensitive, including personal and confidential medical histories, diagnoses, treatment, and insurance details. When you shift systems, this data doesn’t disappear. Much of it is no longer actively used, but still needs to be preserved securely. Not only for legal and compliance reasons, but also for operational and patient care continuity.

You cannot delete Old Medical Records – Why?

Yes! You can’t just hit delete on medical records whenever you feel like it. Healthcare regulations are pretty stringent about how long you have to keep these patient records, depending on the jurisdiction. Why? Because the legal requirements are designed to support continuous patient care, make audit sessions & investigations feasible, and meet compliance obligations.

How long you need to keep medical records in different countries and regions:

Regulation	Country / Region	Retention Period
HIPAA	United States	6 years from the date of creation or last effective use
HITECH	United States	Reinforces HIPAA’s 6-year requirement Security for PHI
Medicare/Medicaid (CMS)	United States	7 years for records related to billing or audits
GDPR	Europe	As long as required for intended purpose (no fixed period) Must securely delete when no longer necessary
NHS	United Kingdom	8 years after last treatment for adults 25 years for maternity and children’s records

You Cannot Keep Patient Data in Legacy Systems – Why?

You may feel familiar with your old systems. But have you ever sensed that comfort comes with a hidden cost? At the expense of security and compliance risks?

Hanging on to legacy systems just to access old patient records, you are essentially pouring money and resources into clunky technology that no longer serves your evolving needs. They cannot guarantee modern encryption and compliance requirements. Lack the security controls and access controls required by modern frameworks.

Is there a smart way to handle it? Absolutely! Balance your comfort and responsibility with thoughtful data management and intelligent archiving. Free up resources, reduce security and non-compliance risks. No legacy baggage is required to keep your historical patient records secure, searchable, fully compliant, and audit-ready.

You Need to Archive Medical Records Securely – Why?

Ever wondered what makes secure archiving a strategic process? That involves:

• Data Analysis & Structuring – in a standardized format so that the archived records are searchable and retrievable across time
• Data Extraction – pulling data in a structured format from old EMR/EHR platforms, imaging systems, lab applications, or even digitized paper records
• Data Encryption – encrypting data both at rest and in transit with AES-256
• Data Access Control – allowing only the right people can access the right data; every access will be an audit log
• Data Retention – storing data on a secure, compliant platform with automated retention policies

Key considerations before archiving medical records:

• Mapping Across EMR/EHR Systems – make sure that duplicate, inconsistent, and fragmented records are mapped properly; improper mapping will be a headache during audits later
• Retention Policy Requirements – understand how long you need to keep each data type according to your country/region retention policies; granular retention policies by data type will have a good archiving solution
• Security & Compliance Framework – make sure that your archiving platform supports regulatory compliances like HIPAA and GDPR; it enhances your branding and trust
• Data Retrieval & User Experience – should allow users to retrieve data easily and securely without logging into different systems for a single record; one intuitive interface can save cost & hours by displaying a complete patient history

What is the next step? Finding a solution for archiving medical records securely that checks all boxes.

On ticking every box that matters, Platform 3 Solutions comes in with its Archon Suite products. The flagship product, Archon Data Store (ADS), is trusted by healthcare providers with its proven success in archiving medical records from legacy systems like Meditech, Cerner, Epic, ADP EV5, and PeopleSoft.

Patient3Sixty (P360): 360° Unified View of Patient Records

Is it enough to archive the patient data and lock it away? Archiving alone is not the finish line. The real value of the archived medical records lies in making them accessible and usable when required.

Yes, Patient3Sixty (P360), an exclusive healthcare flagship product offered by Platform 3 Solutions, makes it possible. As the intelligent front end of Archon Suite, P360 transforms archived medical records into a clinician-friendly experience. Instead of digging through disconnected legacy systems, you get a consolidated, 360-degree view of patient history, enabling fast lookup across patient records, imaging, lab reports, and other attachments.

Eliminating your delayed patient care with a complete, comprehensive view of patient records across disparate systems. With its secure User Interface and FHIR compatibility, P360 supports granular access control. No more, no less access, but exactly what is needed for audit reporting, clinicians, HIM teams, and auditors.

From where does this intelligent front-facing User Interface draw its ability to deliver seamless access? Behind every patient data viewed in Patient3Sixty lies a secure, structured process powered by Archon Suite.

P360 accesses medical records directly from ADS, where historical data is securely archived after being extracted from legacy systems. These records are not merely dumped, but cleansed and tagged with metadata by Archon Analyzer, ensuring every piece of information is structured for fast retrieval. Archon ETL, then securely moves the prepared data into ADS.

This well-structured integration is what makes querying and viewing archived medical records through Patient3Sixty fast when needed.

Archon Suite’s Intelligent Archiving Redefines Your Medical Records Management

What to Archive, What to Discard

The archiving journey for your patient data begins with Archon Analyzer, which evaluates and decides what records require secure archiving. By crawling every nook and corner of legacy systems and enterprise databases, it thoroughly scans data structure profiling, relationships, PHI/PII, ROT, and metadata.

Powered by AI, Analyzer intelligently tags, classifies, and catalogues data. Enables you to tailor retention policy standards by patient data type and category of medical records. The pre-migration process includes data integrity validation, minimizing later audit-time shocks.

Automated Pipelines to Extract, Transform Data

Built to handle gigabytes or terabytes of medical records from multiple systems, Archon ETL can run jobs across dozens of applications at once without slowing down. Using partitioning and parallel processing, ETL breaks large workloads into chunks. Maintaining chain-of-custody logs for traceability, ETL fulfils your archival controls and audit needs.

After defining the data landscape, it securely extracts and transforms the data load for archiving.

Secure, Compliant Archive Built For Healthcare Records

At the core of archiving medical records securely lies a purpose-built centralized platform, Archon Data Store (ADS). Reinforced with what capabilities for secure archiving of patient data?

Robust Data Encryption

• AES-256 at rest and TLS in transit – protects data during storage and transfers
• Data masking – only approved users can see sensitive fields, and others see only redacted & pseudonymized info.

Logically Air-Gapped Data Bunker

• DLP (Data Loss Prevention) – preventing unauthorized access or exfiltration of sensitive data like PHI/PII
• Sensitive Data Isolation – As a quarantined enclave, Data Bunker is isolated from regular access environment of ADS, preventing data breaches
• Tokenization – critical patient information like SSN & medical identifiers can be viewed or decrypted only by permitted roles
• WORM (Write Once Read Many) Storage – prevents tampering, deletion or back-dating

Access Control

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) – permissions to access patient records based on job function, record type, or patient category
• Identity and Access Management (IAM) – least privilege access and Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) for strong user security

Chain-of-Custody & Audit Trails

• Immutable Audit Logs – logs every access, retention change, or deletion, ensuring tamper-proof patient records

Audit-ready, Compliance & Legal Holds

• Automated Retention Policy & Defensible Deletion – aligns with HIPAA, GDPR, and other regulatory standards
• Legal Holds – preserves records under investigations indefinitely
• Geo-fencing – data residency control to comply with regional regulations like HIPAA for the US and PDPA for India

Metadata-driven Data Governance

• Metadata Tagging – classifying medical records by type, category, sensitivity, and retention makes search and retrieval easy and transparent
• Policy Enforcement – for data type across storage tiers and Data Bunker

Tiered Storage

• ‘Hot’ tier – patient data is available for ready access, preserving fast retrieval
• ‘Cold’ tier – Dormant data is moved to cold storage reduces cost

Archiving Built for Healthcare, Fueled By AI

No longer just a regulatory checkbox. However, securely archiving medical records will be a strategic necessity for healthcare enterprises going through modernization, migration, mergers, or acquisitions. Archon Suite, one that unifies AI, Security, Compliance, and Usability into a centralized platform harmoniously. With Analyzer, ETL, ADS, and P360, Platform 3 Solutions delivers an intelligent approach to secure medical records archiving.

Ready to Empower the Future with Secure Patient Data Archiving?

Your patient records have a future. Let’s make it secure & searchable. Schedule a demo to keep your clinical and compliance teams a step ahead.