Compare
Four honest options, including the one that is not us.
Compared by category rather than by brand. A named feature table goes stale, and it tempts every vendor into claims about the others. Here is what each kind of software is genuinely for.
The paper register
What most single-doctor clinics use today, and it is not stupid.
Where it wins
- Costs nothing and never goes down
- No training, no login, no screen between you and the patient
- Survives a power cut and a bad internet month
Where it costs you
- Nobody can find a two-year-old visit in under a minute
- Follow-ups advised are follow-ups forgotten
- The day's cash is a memory, not a number
- One flood, one fire, one lost book, and the history is gone
Pick it when: Stay on paper if you see under fifteen patients a day and nobody ever comes back. Otherwise the register is costing you follow-ups you cannot see.
Hospital-scale HMS
Software designed for 200-bed hospitals, sold down to clinics.
Where it wins
- Genuinely covers everything: wards, labs, pharmacy, inventory, insurance
- Long track record and a large support organisation
- The right answer once you have inpatients and departments
Where it costs you
- Modules you will never open, in every menu you do
- Per-user licensing, setup fees, and an implementation project
- Many clicks to close a visit, because it was designed for a clerk, not a doctor
- Changes take a ticket and a release cycle
Pick it when: Buy this when you have beds. For a busy OPD it is a lot of weight to carry through a three-minute consultation.
Marketplace-first booking software
Tools whose centre of gravity is the patient-facing listing and online appointments.
Where it wins
- Brings new patients who are searching for a doctor
- Online booking and reminders out of the box
- Familiar to patients in metros
Where it costs you
- Your clinic operations are the smaller half of the product
- The walk-in queue, most of an Indian OPD day, is rarely the focus
- Your patient list can end up doubling as someone's marketplace inventory
- Pricing often tracks bookings rather than a flat clinic fee
Pick it when: Worth it for demand generation. It answers "how do patients find me", not "how does my morning run".
OPDesk
One OPD day, end to end, for a clinic without an IT department.
Where it wins
- Built around the walk-in queue and the three-minute consultation
- Flat yearly fee per clinic, no per-user licence, no setup fee
- E-prescriptions on letterhead
- Standard dosing lines in 8 Indian languages, Telugu first
- You can reach the person who wrote it
Where it costs you
- No wards, no labs, no pharmacy inventory
- One engineer ships one thing at a time
Pick it when: Pick this if your day is an outpatient queue and your software should disappear inside it.
The six things an OPD actually runs on.
Everything else in a feature list is downstream of these. Category-level, so read them as “typically”, not as a promise about any one product.
| What your day needs | Paper | Hospital HMS | Marketplace-first | OPDesk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walk-in queue and tokens | By hand | Usually an add-on | Secondary to booking | The centre of the product |
| Patient history | If the card is found | Yes, several clicks deep | Yes | Phone last-4, spelling-tolerant |
| Prescription | Your handwriting | English only, typically | English only, typically | Letterhead, dosing lines in 8 languages |
| Follow-ups | Said aloud | Varies | Reminders, sometimes | Due and overdue lists |
| Cost shape | Free | Per user + setup | Often per booking | Flat, per clinic |
| Your data leaves with you | It is already yours | Ask support | Varies | Ask us for a copy |
What you get on day one.
Registration, the queue, the visit, the letterhead prescription, and follow-ups.
- Registration with phone and fuzzy search
- Tokens and queue, with the TV board
- One-screen consult with auto-save
- E-prescriptions on letterhead
- Standard dosing instructions print in 8 Indian languages, Telugu first. Free-text advice stays in English.
- Follow-ups
Run a morning on your own desk.
Register a patient, run the board, close a visit, and print the prescription. If it does not earn its place, tell us and we stop. Ask and we will arrange a copy of your records.
Or email hello@myopdesk.com.
Or leave a number here. No card. Every plan starts with a free 1-month pilot.