Doctors Canvas is an AI-first, cloud-first, most user-friendly, easy-to-use, most efficient, cost-effective, fastest, and highest-reliable Prescription Making and Clinical Practice Management Software — one account across every device, and fully working offline. This is the setup path, in the order that gets you to a correct first print with the fewest corrections afterwards.
Key takeaways
- Budget about fifteen minutes: account, professional details, letterhead and signature, one chamber, one staff account.
- Enter the BMDC registration number and degrees once — they are stamped onto every print from that field afterwards.
- Upload the letterhead and signature before the first print, not after the first ten.
- The queue display is a browser page on the waiting-room television; there is nothing to install.
- Run the first session with the paper pad beside you, and expect the first few prescriptions to take longer than thirty seconds.
- Offline operation needs no configuration — it is how the storage works.
Setup, in order
Roughly fifteen minutes end to end. The order matters: the details you enter in steps two and three are what the software stamps onto every prescription later.
Create the account and install the app
Start on the free tier. Doctors Canvas is a PWA, so installing it on your chamber laptop and on your phone gives you the same app and the same records on both, without separate downloads to keep in step. Install it on the machine you will actually consult from.
Enter your professional identity
Your BMDC registration number and your degrees go in once. From that point the software formats them onto every printed prescription automatically, in the expected form, so you never retype them and they never drift between prescriptions.
Upload letterhead and digital signature
Upload your letterhead image and your signature before the first session rather than after. Getting this in early means your first print is already the print you want to hand a patient, instead of a draft you reissue.
Create your chambers
Add each location where you consult, with its own visiting hours. Chambers are unlimited and each carries an independent schedule under the one login, so adding the second and third later is a settings change rather than a migration.
Add staff accounts
Create profiles for your receptionist or attendant. These are scoped by role-based access to serial, schedule and patient management — they can register patients and record vitals, and they cannot see your clinical notes.
Open the queue display
On the waiting-room television, open the browser and load your clinic's PQD URL. That is the whole installation. The board updates live as you close each consultation, and from Settings → PQD Controller → Playlist you can publish your own content between turns.
Your first live session
Run the first session with the paper pad beside you. Not because the software is likely to fail, but because the paper pad is what stops a technical hesitation from becoming a clinical one, and its presence costs nothing.
For each patient the flow is short: your receptionist registers them at check-in by mobile number or DGHS Health ID and records vitals, so by the time they reach you the record is open and the numbers are on screen. You enter the diagnosis, Shifa AI drafts the regimen from it, you edit the draft, you clear any interaction or allergy flags, and you print.
Expect the first handful to take longer than thirty seconds. The shorthand is the part that accelerates fastest, because you already know it — 1+0+1 and 5d are what you write by hand, and the fields fill from them directly.
Things people wish they had done on day one
- Upload the letterhead and signature before the first print, not after the first ten.
- Enter the BMDC number and degrees carefully — they propagate to every prescription from that one field.
- Create the receptionist account immediately, so intake runs in parallel with consulting from the first session.
- Put a printed notice by the waiting-room door explaining the token board, for the first week.
- Add all your chambers at the start, even the ones you visit weekly, so records never fragment by location.
- Record known allergies on the patient record as you go — the allergy check can only check what it has been told.
Working offline, deliberately
You do not have to configure anything for offline use; it is how the storage works. Records are written to an on-device IndexedDB store and synced to the cloud when a connection is available. During load shedding or a dead line, intake, queue calling, prescribing and printing all continue.
The one habit worth forming is to let the app settle on a connection at least once a day, so the sync has a window. In practice this happens on its own, because the connection is present for most of a normal session.
What this buys you is that the failure mode of a bad power day is a delayed sync rather than a cancelled session. That is the distinction worth testing during your trial, by disconnecting deliberately and writing a prescription.
After the first week
Two things start compounding once routine use is established. The patient history becomes genuinely useful — the visit timeline, vitals trends and previous prescriptions mean returning patients are faster than new ones, which is the opposite of how paper behaves.
And the public side starts to matter. Your directory profile is public and Google-indexed, patients can book from it, and every booking, cancellation or status change alerts you in-app and emails the patient automatically. The front desk stops making confirmation calls.
At that point it is worth revisiting the PQD playlist. Beyond the token board, publishing your own health tips or clinic branding between turns is what turns the waiting-room screen from a utility into something patients actually watch — and it is the foundation for arranging your own sponsor if you choose to.
Common setup mistakes and how they show up later
The most common mistake is skipping the letterhead and signature upload on the grounds that it can be done later. It can, but every prescription printed before it is one a patient is holding that does not look like your practice. It takes two minutes at the start and cannot be retroactively applied to paper already handed over.
The second is creating one chamber when you consult at three, intending to add the others once you are comfortable. What happens instead is that visits at the other locations get recorded against the one chamber that exists, and the schedule and location history are wrong from the first week. Chambers are unlimited, so there is no reason to stage them.
The third is delaying the staff account. Without it, you are doing registration and vitals yourself between consultations, which is precisely the serial work the parallel front-desk stage exists to remove — and it makes the software feel slower than paper during exactly the window when you are forming an opinion about it.
The one setting most people miss
Record known allergies on the patient record as you go. The pre-save allergy check is only as good as what has been entered, and the patients for whom it matters most are the ones you will see again in three months, by which time neither of you will remember the conversation.
Frequently asked questions
How long does setup take?
About fifteen minutes for account, professional details, letterhead, one chamber and a staff account. The queue display is under a minute on top of that.
Do I need to install anything on the waiting-room TV?
No. Open the television's browser and load your PQD URL. There is no set-top box and nothing to cable.
Can I import my existing patient list?
Patient history builds forward from the first digital visit, so there is no back-entry requirement. Most chambers find the history useful within a couple of months of routine use.
What if I make a mistake on a printed prescription?
Edit the prescription on the record and reprint. Because the record is structured and timestamped rather than a carbon copy, the correction is part of the patient's history rather than a lost sheet.
Does my receptionist need training?
The receptionist workflow is register, issue token, record vitals. That is close enough to what they already do on paper that most front desks are comfortable within two sessions — which is why running the first two days with the paper book open beside the screen is usually enough.
Can I set it up on my phone and use it on the chamber laptop?
Yes. It is one PWA installed on both, reading the same records, so setup done on either device is setup done everywhere. Many doctors configure it on the phone and then consult from the laptop without repeating anything.
Do I have to switch all my chambers over at once?
No, but you should create all of them at setup even if you only start using one. Chambers are unlimited under a single login, and creating them up front is what stops visits being recorded against the wrong location while you roll out.
Set up in fifteen minutes
Free tier to start, BDT pricing published if you outgrow it, and unlimited chambers under one login.