What an Indian prescription must carry: the rules on paper and on screen

A prescription is a legal document. Most of the rules governing it are old, and none of them changed when clinics started sending them on WhatsApp. What follows is what the law requires the document itself to carry, and where the position becomes genuinely unclear.

This page is about the document. If your question is whether you can send it on WhatsApp, that is answered here: /learn/whatsapp-prescriptions

What must be on it

From the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 — the Code of Medical Ethics:

Your registration number. Clause 1.4.1 requires every physician to display the registration number accorded by the State Medical Council or the Medical Council of India in the clinic and on all prescriptions, certificates and money receipts given to patients.

Generic names, legibly, preferably in capitals. Clause 1.5, as amended in September 2016, asks physicians to prescribe drugs with generic names legibly and preferably in capital letters, and to ensure rational prescription and use of drugs.

Failing to display the registration number is listed in the Regulations among the acts that constitute professional misconduct.

Legibility is now a court matter

In August 2025 the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, in Yogesh vs State of Haryana, held that legible prescriptions form part of the right to health under Article 21 of the Constitution.

In December 2025 the National Medical Commission directed every medical college and institution in India to constitute a sub-committee under its Drugs and Therapeutics Committee to monitor prescription practice, review prescriptions for compliance, and add legible handwriting to the curriculum.

The direction is to institutions rather than to individual practitioners. The principle behind it applies to everyone who writes a prescription.

Schedule H, H1 and X

These come from the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, and they govern what a pharmacist may dispense against your prescription.

Schedule H covers roughly 510 drug substances that may be sold by retail only against the prescription of a Registered Medical Practitioner. The pharmacist retains the prescription.

Schedule H1, introduced in 2013 through gazette notification GSR 588(E), covers certain third and fourth generation antibiotics, certain habit-forming drugs and anti-TB drugs. The additional obligation falls on the pharmacist: the supply must be recorded in a separate register giving the prescriber's name and address, the patient's name, the drug and the quantity, and that record must be kept for three years and remain open to inspection.

That register entry is copied from your prescription. If your name, address or registration number is unclear on the slip, the pharmacist cannot complete a record they are legally required to keep.

Schedule X covers a small number of drugs with stricter controls again, and — along with drugs under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 — cannot be prescribed by teleconsultation at all.

No substitution. Rule 65(11-A) provides that a person dispensing a prescription containing a drug specified in Schedule H, H1 or X shall not supply any other preparation in its place, whether or not it contains the same substances. For scheduled drugs, what you write is what is dispensed.

Where the position is genuinely unsettled: signatures

This is the question doctors ask most often about digital prescriptions, and the honest answer is that it is not clearly resolved.

What is clear. Section 5 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 provides that where any law requires information to be authenticated by affixing a signature, that requirement is satisfied by a digital signature affixed in the manner prescribed. Section 3A recognises electronic signatures more broadly, including Aadhaar-based eSign. The recognised techniques are those in the Second Schedule to the Act — principally Digital Signature Certificates issued by licensed Certifying Authorities, and Aadhaar eSign.

What is also clear. The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines, 2020 permit a prescription to be sent electronically as "a photo, scan or digital copy of a signed prescription, or an e-prescription". The alternative implies that an e-prescription is something other than a scan of a wet signature.

What is not clear. No source we can find states, from a regulator, whether a prescription issued in an EMR without a Digital Signature Certificate is valid, or what form of authentication is sufficient. The Telemedicine Society of India has read the IT Act as requiring a digital signature on e-prescriptions; that is a professional body's interpretation, not a regulatory instrument.

In practice most Indian clinic software, including ours, applies an image of the doctor's signature to the prescription. That is the prevailing practice. It is not the same thing as a Digital Signature Certificate under the IT Act, and we are not going to tell you it is.

If this matters to your practice — and it should if you consult remotely at any scale — ask your medical council or your own counsel rather than relying on a software company's reading of it, including this one.

What the document should carry, in practice

Whatever the medium:

• your name, qualification and registration number
• the clinic's name and address
• the patient's name, age, sex and the date
• drugs by generic name, with dose, frequency, duration and route
• your signature
• for a scheduled drug, everything the pharmacist needs to complete their register — which means your details must be readable, not just present

This page describes regulatory requirements in general terms and is not legal advice. The Code of Medical Ethics, the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, the Telemedicine Practice Guidelines and NMC circulars are the authoritative sources; consult them or your medical council for your specific situation.