Custom telemedicine software built for Indian hospitals — NMC Telemedicine Guidelines 2020 compliant, WebRTC video consultations, e-prescriptions delivered via WhatsApp, ABHA-linked patient records, patient and doctor mobile apps, and integrated EMR documentation. Full source code ownership.
Get a Free Demo WhatsApp UsThe NMC (National Medical Commission) Telemedicine Practice Guidelines 2020 made telemedicine legal in India for the first time and established the framework every hospital or clinic must follow. Any telemedicine software built for Indian hospitals must comply with these guidelines — RMP (Registered Medical Practitioner) verification, patient identity and consent at the start of each session, prescription limitations for certain drug schedules, and documentation standards.
Beyond legal compliance, patient expectations for telemedicine in Karnataka have changed. A follow-up consultation for a chronic condition, a post-discharge review, a second opinion from a specialist in another city, or an initial consultation for a non-emergency complaint — patients increasingly expect to do these by video rather than travelling to a hospital. For hospitals, telemedicine generates revenue from consultations that would otherwise go to standalone apps, extends the hospital’s reach to patients in tier-two cities and rural areas, and reduces the load on physical OPD for follow-up cases that do not need in-person examination.
The difference between a standalone telemedicine app and a hospital-integrated telemedicine platform is the EMR connection. When a patient’s teleconsultation is documented in the same EMR as their in-person visits, the doctor has the full clinical history on screen during the video call. The e-prescription writes to the same pharmacy module. The consultation generates a billing line. The ABHA-linked health record captures the teleconsultation. This integration is what our 120-module Hospital ERP provides through Module 60 (Telemedicine) combined with Module 70 (Patient Mobile App) and Module 71 (Doctor Mobile App). OneCity Technologies Pvt. Ltd (CIN: U72100KA2009PTC048911), Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Mysuru.
The NMC guidelines specify: only a Registered Medical Practitioner may conduct telemedicine consultations; the patient’s identity must be verified and consent obtained before each session; certain drugs (Schedule X, narcotics, psychotropics) cannot be prescribed via telemedicine for first-time patients; prescription must be digital with the doctor’s registration number; and the consultation must be documented. Software that does not enforce these requirements exposes the hospital and the doctor to regulatory risk. Reference: NMC Telemedicine Guidelines — nmc.org.in.
Every feature from the live OneCity Advanced Hospital ERP telemedicine module, deployed 2026.
NMC Telemedicine Guidelines 2020 compliance enforced at every step. Video consultation booking with doctor-wise slot configuration. Secure WebRTC video call — no third-party app download required, browser-based for patients. Patient identity verification and digital consent capture before every session. RMP verification to confirm the consulting doctor is a registered medical practitioner. E-prescription generation with doctor’s NMC registration number. E-prescription delivery via WhatsApp and SMS. Follow-up scheduling at the end of the session. Tele-triage option for ED departments to assess patients before ambulance dispatch. Patient-initiated and doctor-initiated consultation modes.
Android and iOS app built with Flutter. Appointment booking for both in-person and teleconsultation. Push notification reminders for upcoming consultations. Teleconsultation access with one tap from the appointment notification. Lab and radiology report viewing. Medication reminder alerts with customisable schedule. Bill viewing and online payment via Razorpay or UPI. Health record download. Emergency SOS button connecting to the hospital. Multi-language support for 10 Indian languages. ABHA health record access — the patient’s full ABDM-linked health history from all providers, accessible in one app.
Today’s patient list showing both OPD and IPD patients. Quick consultation notes entry from mobile during ward rounds or teleconsultation. Prescription writing on mobile with the same RxNorm drug database. Lab and radiology result alerts with critical value push notifications. Teleconsultation from mobile — the doctor joins from wherever they are. Schedule and leave management. Referral notifications. Discharge summary review and digital sign-off from mobile. Revenue and patient statistics dashboard. The doctor’s entire workflow, in their pocket.
Every teleconsultation creates a consultation record in the OPD EMR (Module 4) — vitals if reported by the patient, chief complaint, clinical assessment, ICD-11 diagnosis, and e-prescription. This teleconsultation record is part of the patient’s longitudinal history alongside their in-person visits. When the patient next comes in-person, the doctor sees the teleconsultation in the clinical timeline. The e-prescription is available in the pharmacy module for in-hospital dispensing. The consultation generates a billing line in Module 14. ABHA-linked health records include the teleconsultation as a FHIR R4 document.
The highest-value and lowest-risk telemedicine use case. A patient discharged after surgery or a medical admission needs a follow-up review 7–14 days later to check recovery and adjust medications. This follow-up does not require a physical examination in most cases. Replacing a follow-up in-person visit with a teleconsultation saves the patient travel time and reduces unnecessary OPD congestion without compromising clinical oversight.
Patients with diabetes, hypertension, thyroid conditions, or psychiatric disorders require regular medication reviews and lifestyle counselling. These monthly or quarterly consultations are ideally suited for telemedicine — the doctor reviews the patient’s latest home readings, adjusts the prescription, and answers questions. The teleconsultation writes to the EMR exactly like an in-person visit, maintaining the clinical record continuity that chronic disease management requires.
A patient in Shimoga needing a cardiology consultation, or a patient in Coorg needing a dermatology review, does not need to travel to Bengaluru. Hospital-integrated telemedicine lets a Bengaluru specialist conduct the consultation with full access to the patient’s existing hospital records if the patient is already registered at a connected facility. This extends the hospital’s specialist capacity without additional physical infrastructure.
Planned surgery patients can have pre-operative assessments, anaesthesia consultations, and consent discussions by video before the admission date. This reduces day-of-surgery delays caused by incomplete pre-operative workup and improves the patient’s preparation experience.
Compliance with the NMC Telemedicine Guidelines 2020 is not just a legal requirement — it protects the hospital and the doctor in any medico-legal situation arising from a teleconsultation. Our telemedicine module enforces compliance at every step of the workflow, not just in documentation.
The doctor’s NMC registration number is stored in the doctor master and displayed on every e-prescription. The system prevents a non-registered user from conducting a telemedicine consultation.
Identity verification and digital consent are captured before every teleconsultation session. The consent record is stored with the consultation. If the patient does not provide consent, the session does not proceed.
The system flags drugs in Schedule X, narcotic and psychotropic categories for new patients. The doctor is alerted that these cannot be prescribed via telemedicine for a first-time patient. This prevents inadvertent NMC guideline violation at the prescribing step.
Every teleconsultation generates a structured consultation record in the EMR with the patient identifier, doctor NMC number, consultation date and time, clinical notes, diagnosis (ICD-11 coded), and e-prescription. This record meets the NMC documentation requirement and forms the clinical and legal record of the encounter.
Standalone telemedicine apps (Practo, DocsApp, mFine) serve patients who want any available doctor for a non-specific complaint. Hospital-integrated telemedicine serves patients who want their hospital’s doctor — the specialist who operated on them, the physician managing their chronic condition, the paediatrician who knows their child. The trust relationship and clinical history that already exists between the patient and the hospital cannot be replicated by a marketplace app.
The practical difference shows in clinical quality. When a doctor on a standalone app sees a patient, they have no prior clinical history — every consultation starts from zero. When a doctor in a hospital-integrated telemedicine system sees the same patient, they have the complete clinical record: past diagnoses, previous lab results, current medications, allergies, and prior consultation notes. The clinical decision is made with full information, not from scratch.
There is also a revenue difference. Standalone apps take a significant commission from consultation fees, and the patient relationship stays with the app, not the hospital. Hospital-integrated telemedicine keeps both the revenue and the patient relationship within the hospital. The billing module captures teleconsultation fees, GST invoicing applies, and insurance reimbursement for eligible teleconsultations is tracked through the same insurance module used for in-person claims.
Teleconsultations conducted through a hospital-integrated platform generate ABHA-linked health records in the same FHIR R4 format as in-person records. The patient’s teleconsultation with a Bengaluru specialist is visible to their local GP in Mangaluru when they next visit, via ABDM consent-based health record sharing. This is the continuity-of-care benefit of ABDM that standalone apps cannot deliver, because they operate outside the hospital’s ABHA-linked record system. For more on ABDM architecture, see our ABDM compliance guide.
Telemedicine is typically deployed as part of a broader hospital software project rather than as a standalone build. Indicative ranges:
All costs are one-time development with full source code ownership. No per-consultation or per-user fees.
Telemedicine connects to the full 120-module Hospital ERP — patient management, EMR, billing, ABDM, and the healthcare software platform OneCity has built for Karnataka hospitals since 2017.
Telemedicine is often added to a hospital’s operations in parallel with the physical OPD, not as a replacement. The implementation approach matters: doctors who are already pressed for time in a full OPD schedule are unlikely to adopt telemedicine if it adds administrative complexity rather than removing it.
Our implementation approach keeps the teleconsultation workflow as close to the in-person OPD workflow as possible. The doctor sees teleconsultation appointments in the same patient queue as in-person appointments, just with a video call icon. They join the call from the same interface they use for OPD. The consultation documentation follows the same template. The e-prescription is sent automatically at the end. The only difference the doctor experiences is a video window instead of a patient sitting across the desk.
For the patient’s first teleconsultation, we recommend a brief orientation — many patients, particularly older adults, need guidance on joining a video call. The browser-based option (no app required) and the WhatsApp link delivery method are specifically chosen to minimise the technology barrier for patients who are not smartphone-native.
Training for the appointment scheduling team (who manage the teleconsult slot bookings), the billing team (who process teleconsultation payments), and the doctors takes one to two days. The integration with the existing patient management and EMR is tested thoroughly before any live patient sessions.
Karnataka’s healthcare geography makes telemedicine particularly valuable. The concentration of specialists in Bengaluru, Mangaluru, and Mysuru means that patients in Coorg, Shimoga, Karwar, Dharwad, Udupi, or Chitradurga face significant travel for specialist consultations. A patient with a chronic condition managed by a specialist in Bengaluru may spend a full day travelling for a 15-minute medication review that could be conducted by video in the same time it takes to reach the hospital entrance.
For the coastal Karnataka patient population — NRI families where members divide time between Karnataka and the Gulf — telemedicine extends the reach of their trusted hospital internationally. A patient in Sharjah can have a follow-up consultation with their Mangaluru specialist without waiting for their next India trip. This is a genuinely underserved need in the coastal Karnataka healthcare market.
For hospital groups with multiple Karnataka locations, telemedicine lets specialists at one location serve patients registered at another without requiring the patient to travel between branches. A cardiology specialist at the Bengaluru branch can see a patient who normally attends the Mangaluru branch, with full access to the patient’s record. The consultation billing flows to the consulting branch. This model extends specialist capacity across a group’s network without the capital cost of duplicating specialist staff at every location.
22 years in business. CIN: U72100KA2009PTC048911. Offices: Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Mysuru. We build hospital-integrated telemedicine platforms for Karnataka hospitals as part of our healthcare software practice. Compliant with March 2026 Spam Update, December 2025 Core Update, August 2025 Spam Update. Contact: +91 99023 30233 · contact form · Author profile.
Yes, telemedicine has been legal in India since the NMC Telemedicine Practice Guidelines 2020. The guidelines require: only a Registered Medical Practitioner may conduct teleconsultations; patient identity and consent must be obtained before each session; certain drug schedules (Schedule X, narcotics) cannot be prescribed to first-time patients; the prescription must include the doctor’s NMC registration number; and the consultation must be documented. Software must enforce all of these requirements in the workflow.
The doctor app (Module 71) is a dedicated Android/iOS app. For patients, we offer both a patient app (Module 70) and a browser-based option — the patient joins the video call from a link sent via WhatsApp, without downloading anything. This maximises patient participation, since asking patients to download and install an app before a follow-up consultation creates unnecessary drop-off.
Every teleconsultation creates an OPD consultation record in the EMR: patient identifier, doctor NMC number, date and time, chief complaint, clinical assessment, ICD-11 diagnosis, and e-prescription. This record sits in the patient’s clinical timeline alongside their in-person visits. The teleconsultation is indistinguishable in the EMR from an OPD visit — it is the same structured record, with the same coding standards, generating the same downstream data for ABDM, billing, and pharmacy.
Many insurance policies now cover teleconsultations, and IRDAI has issued guidance on telemedicine reimbursement. Teleconsultation billing in our platform generates a GST-compliant invoice with the appropriate service code, which is submitted through the same insurance/TPA module (Module 15) used for in-person claims. NHCX claim submission (Module 62) also applies to eligible teleconsultation claims.
Yes. Multi-location deployment connects all branches to the same patient master and EMR. A specialist at the Bengaluru branch can conduct a teleconsultation with a patient registered at the Mangaluru branch, with full access to that patient’s clinical record. The consultation billing falls under the consulting doctor’s branch. This is the model for hospital groups extending specialist access across their network without requiring patients to travel.
We use WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) — the same protocol used by Google Meet and other enterprise video platforms. WebRTC is peer-to-peer encrypted, meaning the video stream travels directly between patient and doctor without passing through a server. No third-party video platform account is needed. The consultation session is authenticated: both patient and doctor log in with their hospital credentials before the call begins. Session recordings are not made unless specifically configured and consented to.
Yes. Telemedicine slots are configured per doctor — only doctors who opt in have teleconsultation slots visible for patient booking. A doctor can offer teleconsultation on specific days or time blocks while keeping other slots in-person only. This lets the hospital phase telemedicine adoption: early-adopter doctors go live first, and others join as they are ready. NMC compliance checks apply to all doctors regardless of slot configuration — RMP verification is system-enforced, not dependent on individual doctor setup.
Payment options for teleconsultations include UPI, credit/debit card, net banking via Razorpay, and insurance/TPA claim (for eligible teleconsultation coverage). Payment can be collected at the time of booking confirmation, or billed after the consultation. The billing module generates a GST-compliant invoice with the appropriate service code. For insured patients, the teleconsultation claim is processed through the same insurance module as in-person claims. The hospital controls the fee structure and payment policy per doctor and per consultation type.
Explore the telemedicine module with video consultation features — with screenshots, feature documentation, and implementation details for Karnataka hospitals.
Tell us your hospital’s telemedicine requirements — specialties, patient volume, existing HMS, and whether you need a patient app. Free technical assessment and fixed-price proposal within 5 business days.
Request Free Assessment Call +91 99023 30233 Bengaluru: No. 1869, 2nd Floor, 1st Main Rd, Rajajinagar 560010 | Mangaluru: 1st Floor, Mohtisham, Emporium Complex, Kankanady 575002 | Mysuru: Kantharaj Urs Road, Kuvempu Nagara 570023