Buyer’s guide
How to choose an EMR for your clinic
Ten questions worth asking any vendor before you move your patient records. Take them to a demo — the answers are more useful than the feature list.
Choosing an EMR is harder to undo than most software decisions. Once a year of consultations is inside a system, moving is painful enough that most clinics do not — so the questions below are worth asking before you start, not after.
None of these are trick questions. A vendor who answers them plainly is telling you something; so is one who does not.
Does each clinic get its own system, or is everyone in one database?
In a shared database, your patients sit in the same tables as every other clinic’s. It is a common and workable design, but it limits what can be configured for you alone and widens the blast radius of any single mistake.
What a good answer sounds like A straight answer either way. Note that a custom web address — yourclinic.something.com — does not by itself mean a separate database. Ask specifically.
What happens to your records if you stop paying?
This is the question that decides whether you can ever leave. Most service agreements are silent on it, and silence is itself an answer — it means the terms are whatever the vendor decides at the time.
What a good answer sounds like A written retention period, a stated right to export, and a format another system could read. Ask to see it in the terms of service, not in an email.
How many logins are included, and what does your secretary cost?
Nearly every Philippine clinic has a secretary working the front desk. If staff accounts are billed separately, the advertised monthly price is not the price you will pay.
What a good answer sounds like The number of users in the base price, and the cost of the second and third. Per-seat charges of a few hundred pesos a month add up faster than they sound.
Is the price tied to how many patients you have?
Some systems charge by volume — a few pesos per patient per year, or tiers that step up at 2,500 and 5,000 records. It looks cheap on day one and then grows with the one number you cannot control, because records accumulate whether or not the patient ever comes back. A clinic seeing thirty patients a day crosses 5,000 records in under a year.
What a good answer sounds like A flat price that does not move with your record count. If it is volume-based, ask what it costs at three and five years of accumulated patients, not what it costs today — and whether archiving old records reduces the bill.
Can it issue the documents you actually sign?
“Medical certificate” covers a lot of ground. A PWD certificate needs the NCDA disability category. A surgical clearance needs risk stratification and the perioperative assessment. A generic template will not do either.
What a good answer sounds like Ask to see each document you issue, generated as a real PDF, during the demo. Not a screenshot of the form — the printed output.
Whose name and license number appear on the printout?
Prescriptions and certificates leave your clinic carrying your PRC and PTR numbers and your signature. If the letterhead is awkward to configure, you will end up printing onto pre-printed paper forever, which defeats the point.
What a good answer sounds like A letterhead you set up once — clinic details, licence numbers and validity, signature image — and can preview before saving.
Who does the setup, and what does “setup” include?
“Sign up and start” usually means you do the work. Building your drug list, configuring your letterhead and encoding existing patients are real hours, and they land on the clinic unless someone says otherwise.
What a good answer sounds like Whether setup is self-service or done for you, exactly what is covered, and whether encoding existing paper records is included or quoted separately.
Who runs the backups, and how often?
A clinic PC running local software is one hard-drive failure away from losing years of records. Cloud systems should take this off your hands, but not all of them say so explicitly.
What a good answer sounds like Backups run on the vendor’s side, on a stated schedule, needing nothing from the clinic. If the answer involves you remembering to do something weekly, assume it will not happen.
What happens when the internet goes down?
Any cloud system needs a connection, and connections in the Philippines are not uniformly reliable. The useful signal here is not the answer itself but whether the vendor gives it straight.
What a good answer sounds like A plain statement of what stops working, plus a practical fallback — whether the full system runs in a phone browser on mobile data, for instance.
Is it built around a queue or an appointment book?
Most Philippine private clinics run on walk-ins. An appointment-led system asks you to maintain a calendar that does not match how patients actually arrive, and the mismatch does not improve with use.
What a good answer sounds like Watch the daily working view in a demo. If the first screen is a calendar and your clinic is walk-in, that is the screen your secretary will fight every morning.
Does it fit your specialty, or is it one shape for everyone?
A paediatrician needs immunisation schedules and growth measurements. A rheumatologist needs lab values readable across visits. A general system leaves you working around what is missing, in a notes field.
What a good answer sounds like Ask what specifically changes for your specialty, who configures it, and whether it costs extra.
How DokTema answers these
Since you are reading this on our site, here is where we stand — including the places we do not have an answer you would like.
- Own system per clinic, with daily backups Each clinic runs on its own instance and database rather than a shared one. Backups run daily on the server side with nothing required from you.
- Flat price, whatever your patient count No limit on patients, no per-patient charge and no tier that steps up as your records accumulate. ₱1,000 or ₱1,500 a month is the price in year one and in year five.
- A secretary account is included On every plan, including the ₱1,000 one. Staff manage the queue, register patients and upload files; clinical notes stay read-only on their side.
- Four certificate templates, not one Standard, PWD with the NCDA category, surgical clearance with risk stratification, and treatment plan — all printed on your own letterhead with your PRC and PTR numbers.
- Set up for you, and for your specialty Your instance is configured before you log in. Pediatric clinics get immunisation schedules and growth measurements; other modules are switched on per clinic at no extra monthly cost.
- Built on the queue The daily view is a walk-in queue your secretary works through, not a calendar.
And where we would not be your best option
- There is no offline mode. If your connection drops, the system is unreachable until it returns — mobile data on a phone browser is the usual fallback.
- There is no appointment calendar and no online patient booking. If your clinic runs on booked slots rather than walk-ins, another system will fit you better.
- There is no billing or fee sheet module. Payment tracking and financial reports are quoted as custom work.
- Retention and export terms after cancellation are being written into the Terms of Service. Ask us where that stands rather than assuming — it is a fair question and question two above is ours to answer too.