Most doctors prescribe the same twenty or thirty medicines for most of the day, with much the same doses and instructions. Yet every prescription is written from scratch: the name, the strength, the dose, the duration, before or after food. That is wasted time, and a source of small, repeated mistakes.
Medicine suggestions in clinic software solve exactly that. They are not an "intelligence" that decides for you; they are an organised memory of what you prescribe. This article explains how they work in TabeebHub, their limits, and how to get the most from them. The medicine suggestions page describes the feature in detail.
Why prescriptions take time
Three things repeat in every clinic:
- Recall: the brand name, the available strength, the usual dose for each case.
- Rewriting: the same instructions written dozens of times a day.
- Interruptions: a question from the patient or a call from reception mid-prescription, so a line is missed or a dose is rushed.
The more patients you see, the more pressure on all three.
How suggestions work in TabeebHub
When you start typing a medicine name on a prescription, a list of suggestions appears. It is ranked by four things:
- Your own usage: the medicines you prescribe most come first. This matters most.
- Your clinic's usage: what colleagues in the same clinic prescribe.
- Recency: what you prescribed in recent days and weeks ranks above what you have not used for months.
- Text match: what matches the letters you typed.
The software learns from your prescribing automatically: every medicine you put on a prescription carries more weight in your future suggestions, with no setup from you.
What suggestions do not do: they do not diagnose, they do not propose a treatment for a diagnosis, and they do not choose the medicine for you. They make it quicker to reach what you usually choose.
Your medicine library
Alongside suggestions, every doctor has a personal medicine library. Save a medicine with its default instructions, such as "one tablet twice daily after food for five days", and it goes onto a prescription with those instructions in one tap, ready to adjust.
A few details matter:
- The library never changes old prescriptions. Each prescription keeps the medicine name as it was written that day.
- You can deactivate a medicine you no longer use without deleting any record.
- A medicine that is not in your library can be typed as it is, and it joins your suggestions from then on.
Suggestions and safety: alerts before you finalise
Speed alone is not enough, so alerts appear before a prescription is finalised:
- Allergy: if a medicine conflicts with an allergy on the patient's record, the prescription cannot be finalised until the doctor reviews it and, to continue, gives a clinical reason.
- Known drug interactions between the medicines on the prescription.
- Duplicates: the same medicine twice on one prescription.
- Dose: when a dose is outside the usual range, too high or too low.
These alerts support your judgement; they are not a complete database of every possible interaction. Your review remains the safeguard, and overriding an alert is recorded with the doctor's name and reason.
Example: a monthly blood-pressure follow-up
An internist sees a hypertensive patient every month. Without suggestions, the three medicines are written out every time. With suggestions:
- Open the last prescription in the patient's file to see what was given.
- Type the first letters of each medicine; it appears at the top because you prescribe it often.
- Pick it and it is added with your saved instructions.
- Adjust one dose based on today's reading.
- Review the alerts and finalise.
The time goes into the clinical decision, not the writing.
Getting the most from suggestions
- Build your library in week one: add the twenty medicines you prescribe most, with their usual instructions.
- Write names one way: if you spell the same medicine three ways, its suggestions split across three names.
- Review default instructions now and then, especially when available strengths change.
- Record allergies for every patient: the most important alert depends on them.
- Do not rely on the order alone: the top suggestion is the one you use most, not necessarily the right one for this patient.
Limits you should know
- Suggestions start almost empty for a new doctor and improve with use, so expect to type more in the first days.
- There is no catalogue of every medicine on the market inside the suggestions; the list is built from your library and from your own and your clinic's prescribing.
- Alerts do not cover everything; they assist, they do not replace review.
For the full picture, from writing to printing, read Electronic Prescriptions in the Clinic.
FAQ
Do suggestions replace the doctor's judgement?
No. They make it quicker to reach the medicines you usually prescribe, with their instructions, but they do not diagnose or choose treatment. Every prescription is the doctor's decision.
How does the system learn?
Every medicine you prescribe adds weight to it in your suggestions. What you prescribe most, what you prescribed recently and what your clinic prescribes rise to the top, with no setup needed.
What if I need a medicine that is not on the list?
Type it as it is. It is saved on the prescription as you wrote it and joins your suggestions afterwards. If you will prescribe it often, add it to your library with its instructions.
Is there a database of every medicine available in Egypt?
No. Suggestions in TabeebHub are built from your library and from your own and your clinic's prescribing, not from a catalogue of every product on the market, so the list reflects the way you prescribe.
Do suggestions work for every specialty?
Yes, because they are built from what each doctor prescribes. A paediatrician sees the children's medicines they use, and a dermatologist sees their creams and ointments.