Print a prescription out of your clinic software and look at the header. If your state medical council registration number is missing, the prescription is short of something clause 1.4.1 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 requires: the registration number has to appear in the clinic and on all prescriptions, certificates and money receipts given to patients. Failing to display it is listed in clause 7.2 among the acts that can be treated as misconduct.
It is the commonest gap in a software-generated prescription, because the person who set the template up was a vendor's onboarding executive, not a doctor. Two sets of rules decide whether a digital prescription stands up: the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, which govern what a pharmacist may dispense against it, and the 2002 conduct regulations, which govern how you as a doctor may write it. The NMC's 2023 conduct regulations are in abeyance, so 2002 is still the text that binds.
What the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules require
Rule 65(10) is short enough to quote. A prescription shall "be in writing and be signed by the person giving it with his usual signature and be dated by him"; it shall specify the name and address of the person for whose treatment it is given; and it shall indicate the total amount of the medicine to be supplied and the dose to be taken.
Three things follow for software. The date must be on the document, not only in your database. The patient's address, not just a name and an age, has to print. And "total amount to be supplied" means a quantity: 10 tablets, one 60 ml bottle. A prescription that says "Tab. Amoxicillin 500 mg, 1-0-1" and stops has not said how many to give, and the pharmacist is the one left guessing.
Rule 65(9) sets out why any of this matters. Substances in Schedule H, Schedule H1 and Schedule X cannot be sold at retail except on and in accordance with a Registered Medical Practitioner's prescription. Schedule X prescriptions have to be in duplicate, with one copy kept by the seller for two years.
Rule 65(11) adds a detail your template should carry. A Schedule H, H1 or X prescription must not be dispensed more than once unless you have written on it that it may be. If you want a patient to get a repeat, say so and say how many times. If you do not, a compliant pharmacy will send them back to you, and that is the system working as intended.
Registration number, records, and the conduct rules
The registration number, as above. Clause 7.13 goes further and says the contents of your prescription paper should be the same as the contents of a proper signboard: your name, the qualifications you hold from a university or statutory body, titles, the name of your speciality, and your registration number including the name of the state medical council you are registered under. Nothing else. A prescription letterhead advertising a diagnostic package is outside that.
Clause 1.5 was substituted by a notification in the Gazette of India on 8 October 2016 and now reads that every physician should prescribe drugs with generic names legibly and preferably in capital letters, and should ensure rational prescription and use of drugs. Software helps with two-thirds of that automatically: printed text is legible by definition, and a drug master can carry the generic name alongside the brand. It cannot make the choice rational for you.
The signature question
Rule 65(10)(a) wants a prescription signed with the prescriber's usual signature. A prescription that comes out of a computer with no signature on it at all is the weakest artefact in the chain, whatever your software calls it.
The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines of 25 March 2020, which form Appendix 5 of the 2002 regulations, are the clearest official statement on the format. Clause 3.6.4.2 says the practitioner "shall provide photo, scan, digital copy of a signed prescription or e-Prescription to the patient via email or any messaging platform". So a photographed signed prescription and an e-prescription both count, in the telemedicine setting the guidelines cover.
The practical reading, and the one to build to: keep a signature on the document. A scanned signature image applied to a PDF, or a digital signature certificate, gives you something that looks like a signed prescription to a pharmacist who has never met you. Get your own legal advice if you want to move to certificate-based signing only, because we could not find an NMC or health ministry circular that settles how Rule 65(10)(a) treats it.
One more line from the same guidelines, clause 3.2.5: the registration number has to be displayed not only on prescriptions but on your website, electronic communication including WhatsApp and email, and receipts. If you send prescriptions on WhatsApp, that is the clause that applies to you.
Telemedicine limits your drug list
If the consultation was remote, what you may prescribe narrows, and this is the part most e-prescription software does not model at all.
List O covers medicines safe on any mode of consultation, broadly over-the-counter ones: paracetamol, ORS packets, cough lozenges, iron and folic acid, calcium. List A is for a first consultation done on video, plus refills on follow-up: skin ointments like clotrimazole, ciprofloxacin eye drops, and refills of chronic medicines such as enalapril, atenolol, metformin or a salmeterol inhaler. The Board of Governors added phenobarbitone, clobazam and clonazepam to List A by public notice on 11 April 2020, for first consult as well as follow-up. List B is for add-on medicines at follow-up, the thiazide you add to an atenolol that is not controlling the blood pressure.
The Prohibited List is absolute: nothing in Schedule X of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, and no narcotic or psychotropic substance under the NDPS Act, 1985, may be prescribed over telemedicine at all. The guidelines list using telemedicine to prescribe from the restricted list as an example of misconduct.
So the same doctor, prescribing the same drug to the same patient, is bound differently depending on whether the consultation was in person, on video, or over a phone call. If your software prescribes across all three, it should know which one it is in. Speed of prescribing in a physical OPD is a different problem, and one we covered separately in our piece on paperless OPD consultation software.
How long things have to be kept
Clause 1.3.1 of the 2002 regulations requires medical records of indoor patients to be kept for three years from the date treatment commenced, and clause 1.3.2 requires them to be handed over within 72 hours of a request from the patient or a legal authority. The telemedicine guidelines add that logs of the interaction, the documents used, and prescription records must be maintained, prescriptions "as required for in-person consultations".
On the dispensing side the periods are different again: Schedule H1 sales go into a separate register kept for three years and open to inspection, Schedule X duplicate prescriptions are held two years, and pharmacy registers generally are preserved for not less than two years from the last entry. If you run a counter inside the clinic, those are yours too, and we go through them in pharmacy billing software for an in-clinic pharmacy.
Check these before you buy
Ask for a printed sample from a live account, not a slide. On that sample: is the registration number there, is the date there, is the patient's address there, is a quantity printed against every drug, is there a signature, and does the letterhead carry anything clause 7.13 would not allow. Then ask whether the system can mark a prescription as repeatable, and whether it can tell a video consultation from a phone one.
ExaHealth's e-prescriptions are typed or dictated by voice, with medicines picked from a drug list instead of free text, so the name and strength that reach the pharmacist are the ones you chose. Interactions are flagged before the prescription goes out, and the patient gets a printable PDF on WhatsApp along with a plain-language explanation of the visit. Video consultations allow prescribing inside the call. The header fields, the signature and the telemedicine drug list are set-up decisions, so test them on a real prescription with us the same way you would with anyone else.
To see how prescribing and delivery work together in one system, take a look at what ExaHealth does for doctors.
Sources
What a prescription must contain: Rule 65(10) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 says a…
The registration number must appear on prescriptions: "Every physician shall display the…
Telemedicine prescriptions: "RMP shall provide photo, scan, digital copy of a signed…
Phenobarbitone, Clobazam and Clonazepam added to List A for first consult and follow-up
The 2002 regulations still govern because the NMC's 2023 conduct regulations are in abeyance
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a typed prescription without a signature valid in India?
Rule 65(10)(a) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 says a prescription shall be in writing and signed by the person giving it with his usual signature, and dated. A completely unsigned printout is the weakest version you can hand a pharmacist. The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines accept a photo, scan or digital copy of a signed prescription, or an e-prescription, so keep a signature on the document in some form.
What must appear on a prescription?
From Rule 65(10): the date, the patient's name and address, the total amount of medicine to be supplied and the dose. From clause 1.4.1 of the 2002 regulations: your state medical council registration number. From clause 7.13: your name, qualifications, titles, speciality and registration number, and not much else on the letterhead. From clause 1.5 as amended in October 2016: generic names, legibly and preferably in capitals.
Can I send a prescription to the patient on WhatsApp?
The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines say you may provide a photo, scan or digital copy of a signed prescription, or an e-prescription, by email or any messaging platform. Clause 3.2.5 of the same guidelines requires your registration number to be displayed on electronic communication including WhatsApp and email. If you send it straight to a pharmacy instead of to the patient, you need the patient's explicit consent, and they keep the right to get it dispensed wherever they choose.
Which medicines can I prescribe on a phone consultation?
On audio, List O and List B only, per the guidelines' own matrix: over-the-counter category medicines any time, and add-on medicines at follow-up. List A needs the first consultation to be on video, after which refills may follow on any mode. Nothing on the Prohibited List, meaning Schedule X drugs and NDPS substances, may be prescribed over telemedicine at all.