Point-of-care advertising shows messages about medicines and treatments to doctors inside the software that they use to see patients and write prescriptions. "Point of care" means the place and the moment at which a doctor treats a patient. The message appears while the doctor is deciding on a treatment, which is why drug makers pay for it.
Clinics and hospitals keep each patient's records in an electronic health record, or EHR. A clinic's EHR is called an ambulatory EHR. It holds the patient's history, the diagnosis and the prescriptions. Many EHR and e-prescription apps in India are free or cheap for doctors. They earn part of their income by showing a small panel of messages on the screen. A point-of-care platform sells that panel to drug makers, and chooses which message to show to which doctor.
Imagine a general physician in Nagpur who uses a free e-prescription app on a tablet. A patient's blood pressure reads 158/96, and the doctor types the diagnosis: hypertension. A panel at the side of the screen shows a short message from a drug maker. It summarises a recent study on a combination tablet for blood pressure, with a link to the full prescribing information. For a later patient with diabetes, the panel may instead offer a printable diet chart in Marathi, which the doctor can hand to the patient. The platform chose each message using only the doctor's speciality and the diagnosis on the screen. The patient's name and records never left the app.
This design matters for privacy. Patient records are personal data under the DPDP Act, India's data protection law, and doctors must keep their patients' information confidential. So the platform should receive only what it needs, such as the doctor's speciality and a diagnosis code, without the patient's identity.
There are also rules about what the message may say. In India, prescription medicines may not be advertised to the public. Drug makers may promote them only to doctors, and must follow a code of marketing practice. The message must give accurate information, and it must not offer the doctor gifts. The doctor still decides the prescription.
Drug makers usually buy these messages as campaigns. They are told how many doctors of each speciality saw a message, and how many opened the details. In the United States, they also buy them through healthcare advertising platforms, which reach doctors on websites and apps as well. In India, this work is one part of a drug maker's pharma commercial operations, alongside the visits of its medical representatives.