Software for aesthetic medicine clinics: patient files, photos and signatures

Software for an aesthetic medicine clinic has to handle more than appointments: each treatment with the documents it requires, ready to sign; the facial map of each session with the product and batch used; batch-level stock with expiry dates; clinical photos kept separate from social media ones; and quotes that end up as invoices.

What is particular about an aesthetics clinic

An aesthetics clinic shares the diary, the patient file and invoicing with any other clinic. But it has four traits that a generic appointment tool does not solve:

• Many documents per patient. Data protection, photo authorisation, authorisation for marketing use and, depending on the treatment, a consent form of its own. If they depend on someone remembering, one will be missing on the day it is needed.
• Product with batch and expiry. Knowing which product and which batch was used on each patient, and which batches expire soon, is stock-room organisation, and in a notebook it gets lost.
• Photos with two different uses. The photo that documents the session is not the photo that gets published.
• A quote before treating. What is accepted has to end up in an invoice that adds up.

If you also combine aesthetic medicine and advanced aesthetics, with shared treatment rooms and equipment, the software should tell them apart. In Mi Clínica they are two distinct specialties, each with its own colour and its own tab in the patient file, and a piece of equipment such as a laser is registered as a resource so that the diary warns you if it is already booked.

Each treatment, with its documents

With documents, the risk is not only signing badly: it is also forgetting to sign. In Mi Clínica each treatment in the catalogue says which documents it requires: consent forms, data protection, authorisations, with the clinic's own or standard templates. When that treatment is assigned to a patient, with an appointment or a treatment plan, the documents it requires and the patient does not yet have are prepared as drafts, and the patient's “Documentos” (Documents) tab counts them.

Data protection, photography and marketing ones are requested only once per patient, whichever template they were made with. A treatment's consent form, on the other hand, goes with that treatment. And if one is not needed in a particular case, it is cancelled.

A treatment can only require documents that the patient signs: reports, prescriptions and plans are prepared by their professional. The final legal text of each document is supplied by the clinic with its own templates. How signing then works on the tablet or remotely, and what evidence is kept, is covered in signing consent forms on a tablet.

The file and the facial map of each session

The patient file holds a general history with allergies, medication, medical history and habits, and a tab for each specialty with its history, visits, the progress notes of each session, the body chart and files. Allergies noted in the general history appear as a warning in the file header, which the whole team sees.

In aesthetic medicine and advanced aesthetics the body chart opens by default on the face, and there is also a body template. On the map you mark the areas of the session and, on each mark, you can indicate the batch used: the software only lets you choose batches belonging to the clinic and fills in the product and batch number itself, so that nobody types them by hand.

The body chart is saved in versions: each visit is kept as a version, and the map of a session that has already been saved is not changed or deleted. What is treated, where and with what is the professional's clinical decision: Mi Clínica does not diagnose or give health advice.

Batch stock: which patients each one was used on

Mi Clínica's stock is managed by batch: product, batch number, expiry date, supplier, quantity remaining and number of uses. The inventory flags expired batches, those expiring within the next 30 days and those running low.

When the use of a batch on a patient is recorded, it notes who used it, on which patient and when, it is deducted from the remainder and the software prevents you from using more than there is. From the batch detail you can see which patients it was used on, with names visible only to those with clinical or management access.

What is that useful for in practice? If a supplier alerts you to a problem with a batch, instead of going through files one by one you have the list of patients in front of you. And if you withdraw a batch, because it has expired or because of an incident, the software sets the remainder to zero and stores the reason in its history.

Clinical photos and social media photos, kept apart

In Mi Clínica photos are uploaded to the patient file, start out private and are seen only by those with clinical access. There is a photo comparison tool to see progress.

To use a photo in marketing, the patient's signed marketing consent is needed: it is never inferred from the clinical photo. Why these are two different consents and how to organise them is explained in before and after patient photos.

Quotes and payments

When the quote comes before the treatment, what matters is that what was accepted ends up in the invoice. In Mi Clínica quotes are printed or downloaded as a PDF for the patient, marked as accepted or rejected and, once the treatment is done, converted into an invoice, once only.

Payments in cash, by card, Bizum (Spain's mobile payment app) or bank transfer are recorded in the software, with no online payment, and invoices come out with gap-free serial numbers and are cancelled with a corrective invoice.

What to check before deciding

If you are comparing software for your aesthetics clinic, try it with your real catalogue, not with sample data –

1. Create two of your own treatments and say which documents each one requires.
2. Book an appointment for a new patient with one of them and see which drafts appear.
3. Sign one on the tablet and send another remotely.
4. Register a product with two batches, record its use and search for which patients it was used on.
5. Upload a photo and check that it stays private to the clinic, with its label.
6. Make a quote, accept it and convert it into an invoice.

And bear in mind what it does not do today: automatic reminders to patients by email, SMS or WhatsApp are being activated and are not sent today, and there is no online booking, online payment or patient portal or app. The rest of the features are on the Mi Clínica page (in Spanish) and the overview is in what clinic management software should have.