ICANotes Backup Policy: How Your Data is Protected

ICANotes Backup Policy: How Your Data is Protected

Index

  • Sections
    • Real-Time Data Protection
    • Hourly Snapshots
    • Daily Backups
    • Offsite & Encrypted Storage
    • Weekly Long-Term Backups
    • Session Continuity and Data Recovery
  • Summary

At ICANotes, we understand the critical importance of safeguarding electronic protected health information (ePHI). Our backup strategy is designed with reliability, security, and HIPAA compliance in mind, ensuring that your data is protected against hardware failure, accidental deletion, or natural disaster.

Real-Time Data Protection

  • Live Entry Capture: As you enter information into ICANotes, each field is saved immediately upon completion—either when you leave the field or change screens.
  • Disk Redundancy: All active data is written to fault-tolerant storage systems using redundant disk arrays to minimize risk of hardware failure.

Hourly Snapshots

  • Full Database Snapshots: Every hour, we take a snapshot of the entire database.
  • Read-Only Replicas: These snapshots are used to generate a read-only replica of your data for immediate failover recovery if needed.

Daily Backups

  • Local Retention: Each night, the most recent hourly snapshot is saved to our local SAN/NAS storage infrastructure (with built-in redundancy).
  • 30-Day Window: We retain daily backups on local storage for a rolling 30-day period.

Offsite & Encrypted Storage

  • Secure Transmission: Daily backups are securely transmitted via encrypted session links to offsite storage facilities.
  • Encrypted Retention: All offsite backups are stored in encrypted format to ensure HIPAA compliance.

Weekly Long-Term Backups

Forever Retention Policy: Each week, a full backup of the database is taken and retained indefinitely on redundant storage as part of our archival strategy.

Note: While we retain these backups long-term, customers should not assume ICANotes will store data forever. Upon account termination or contractual changes, data retention will follow the ICANotes Terms of Service.

Session Continuity and Data Recovery

  • Session Resilience: ICANotes uses Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) technology. If your internet connection is interrupted while working, you can reconnect and resume without losing any progress.
  • User-Level Restoration: Most deleted notes or chart entries can be easily restored by users through the ICANotes interface without needing support intervention.

Summary

ICANotes performs:

  • Real-time field-level saving
  • Hourly snapshots with read-only replicas
  • Daily backups stored locally and offsite
  • Weekly full backups retained indefinitely
  • All storage secured with redundancy and encryption

We retain backup data for over six years, though longer-term retention may occur as an added safety measure. For specific data retention terms upon exiting ICANotes, please refer to your signed agreement or Terms of Service.

For any questions about data security, backup recovery, or exporting your data, contact ICANotes Support at 443-569-8778.

    • Related Articles

    • Patient Data export (Individual level)

      Index Sections EXPORTING PATIENT DATA How to generate an export for an individual patient EXPORTING PATIENT DATA In the following Knowledge Base article we will explain step by step how to export patient information (such as notes, appointments, ...
    • Data Export and Demographics Import

      1. The current owner of the data will need to run a full Clinical/Demographic Search report for all active, inactive and pending patients. Go to the Reports drop-down menu and select Clinical/Demographic Search. 2. On the Clinical/Demographic Search ...
    • Patient Data Export (Individual & Group Level)

      Index Sections EXPORTING PATIENT DATA How to generate an export for an individual patient EXPORTING PATIENT DATA The EHI Export functionality serves as a valuable tool for our customers, enabling them to perform a manual one-time export of health ...
    • ICANotes Disaster Plan

      ICANotes is committed to our security efforts. We are assessing potential risks which involve preparing for different types of disasters. ICANotes is vigilant about complying with state and federal regulations regarding contingency plans and backups. ...
    • ICANotes Servers Downtime Procedure

      Index Sections ICANotes Infrastructure & Redundancy Recommended Downtime Best Practices 2. Print Your Daily Schedule 3. Keep Prescription Pads Handy 4. Using DrFirst Outside of ICANotes Though ICANotes strives to maintain near 100% uptime for all ...