Continuous auditing for health care decision support systems

Abstract

Information technology has changed the way organizations conduct business and it has become imperative to make effective and timely decisions that can be verified. In particular, real time systems for health care need new techniques of continuous auditing to ensure they are being used and working properly. Traditional auditing methods carried out on long term schedules are incapable of supporting real time systems to make timely and informed decisions. We propose a service oriented approach, with associated mechanisms, for designing and implementing continuous auditing of data, access to systems, and transactions in order to assure correct and timely decision support. We survey recent research and practice and discuss work in progress towards embedding continuous auditing within a health care system. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.