The Akuru browser extension is designed to do as little with patient data as possible. Its only job is to carry information between two tabs you already have open (your EMR and i-scribe) inside your own browser. It does not send patient data to Akuru's servers, it does not keep a copy, and it can only run on a short, named list of medical websites.

This page explains, precisely, how that works.

```callout kind="info"
**The short version.** The extension reads what's on the page, passes it to the other tab, and forgets it. No patient data leaves your browser through the extension, nothing is stored, and the extension is blocked from every site except i-scribe, Xestro, and Akuru's medical domain.
```

## Where your data goes (and where it doesn't)

The extension works **tab-to-tab, inside your browser**. When you click **New Patient**, **Generate**, or **Insert Outputs**, the extension reads what it needs from one tab and hands it to the other using Chrome's built-in extension messaging and a small amount of temporary browser storage.

- **No patient data is sent to Akuru servers by the extension.** The transfer happens locally, between your EMR tab and your i-scribe tab.
- The temporary storage the extension uses for the hand-off (for example, a patient record waiting to be picked up by the i-scribe tab) is a short-lived handshake. These entries are **cleared within about 10 seconds**.

## Nothing is kept

The extension does not persist patient data. It reads from the EMR or i-scribe in real time, passes the information through to the other tab, and then forgets it. There is no patient database in the extension and no long-term record of what was transferred.

The one place a patient's name appears, briefly, is the name-match safeguard: before any transfer the extension compares the patient open in your EMR with the patient open in i-scribe, so a consult can't be filed against the wrong record. That comparison is transient. The name is held only long enough to make the check.

```callout kind="care"
The name match is a safeguard, not a guarantee. It helps catch the obvious mistakes, but **you remain responsible for confirming you have the right patient** before you transfer anything or start transcribing. For how the match itself works, see [Patient safety: how name matching works](/browser-extension/how-name-matching-works).
```

## The Chrome permissions it asks for, and why

When you install the extension, Chrome lists the permissions it requests. The extension asks for three, and each maps to a specific, narrow job:

```steps
1. **storage** is used for the brief tab-to-tab hand-off described above, and for a small diagnostic log (see below). The hand-off entries clear within about 10 seconds.
2. **tabs** is used to find and switch to the right tab. This is how the extension locates your i-scribe and EMR tabs to route messages between them, and how **Generate** brings you to i-scribe to review your outputs.
3. **clipboardRead** is used to read the clipboard immediately after you click i-scribe's **Copy** button, so copy-and-paste of an output works reliably. Chrome asks for this at install so that the copy step doesn't silently fail later.
```

```callout kind="info"
**The diagnostic log holds no patient data.** The extension keeps a small rolling log (the most recent 500 entries) to help diagnose problems. It records things like which action ran, when, and how long a piece of text was: **action names, timestamps and lengths only**. It does not record patient names or any clinical content.
```

## It can only run on medical sites

Many extensions request access to every website you visit. This one does not. Its content scripts are **scoped to a specific, named list of hosts**:

- i-scribe domains
- `*.xestro.com`
- `medical.akuru.io`

```callout kind="success"
**No `<all_urls>` access.** Because the extension is restricted to those medical hosts, it has no reach into your banking, your email, or any other site you browse. On every other website, the extension simply isn't running. (The build published to the Chrome Web Store also strips out the developer-only `localhost` host.)
```

The extension is distributed as an **unlisted Chrome Web Store listing**. You install it from the link Akuru provides rather than finding it in public store search, but it's installed and updated through Google's reviewed, signed distribution channel like any other Chrome extension.

## Learn more

```callout kind="info"
For Akuru's broader security and compliance posture (data handling across the wider platform, certifications, and contact details) see the [Akuru Trust Centre](https://trust.akuru.com.au). This article covers specifically how the browser extension handles data; the Trust Centre covers the platform as a whole.
```