Tunisie
E-prescription in Tunisia: how to get started
Signed, verifiable, legible digital prescriptions: what that changes for everyone.
6 min read
Practice management software is not a purchase, it is a working method adopted for years. What follows is a grid, not a ranking: what a practice runs on daily, where the record lives, and where each plan stops.
What a practice here runs on
Software for a Tunisian practice has to carry six things in one tool — the record, the calendar, the consultation, the prescription, the invoice and the link to the patient. Whatever is missing comes back as paper.
That floor sits on all three plans: web and mobile apps for doctor, patient and secretary; unlimited patients, each with an 11-section medical history; a staff-side calendar with drag-and-drop and conflict detection; a consultation workspace for symptoms, notes, diagnosis and treatment; prescriptions issued as a SHA-256 signed, QR-verified PDF; invoicing with manual payments — cash, cheque, transfer, card, insurance — reconciled automatically against the invoice; secure patient chat and a portal.
The link to the patient is work the practice performs, not something that happens on its own. Walk-ins slot into a queue at the desk, and a patient is connected one of five ways — email, SMS, link, Patient ID or QR code — always at the practice's initiative. Reminders run push and in-app on every plan, and the doctor's half of it is on the mobile app for doctors.
Where the record lives
On a hosted product the record does not live on the machine in the consulting room. It lives behind a session, reachable only by identified accounts, which moves the question from "who has the computer" to "who can open a record".
For the Tunisian service, physical hosting is within Tunisia, and Doctopass's INPDP declaration is submitted. The most sensitive categories carry field-level encryption under separate keys; deletion is soft, and patient data is never hard-deleted. Access runs through argon2id hashing, TOTP two-factor, short-lived JWTs, rotated refresh tokens, role-based and per-record authorization, and session anomaly detection. Cross-doctor access is consent-gated, per doctor, revocable, and audited.
AI processing runs on a model self-hosted in-jurisdiction; no personal data reaches an external provider, and identifiers are stripped before any prompt leaves the servers. Every AI output is a draft the doctor reviews and explicitly signs: no automatic finalization, no silent write. The platform is GDPR-ready, which is not the same as making anyone compliant; no software does that. What the practice itself owes is a question for the INPDP, treated in the computerised patient record and the INPDP.
Three plans, and their gates
Three plans, quoted per doctor, charged per month, collected annually: Essential at 69 DT, Pro at 159 DT, Premium at 269 DT. What follows is a list of gates, because gates are discovered late.
| Capability | Essential | Pro | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rate, per doctor per month, billed annually | 69 DT | 159 DT | 269 DT |
| Secretary seats | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| SMS reminder credits | Add-on | 200 / month | 500 / month |
| WhatsApp reminder credits | Add-on | 200 / month | 500 / month |
| Ambient voice scribe | — | 600 min / month | 2,000 min / month |
| Auto-invoicing from the consultation | — | Yes | Yes |
| Revenue analytics | — | Yes | Yes |
| Virus-scanned in-chat file sharing | — | Yes | Yes |
| Full audit trail | — | Yes | Yes |
| Audit log search and investigation UI | — | — | Yes |
| CNAM auto-coding | — | — | Yes |
| Handwriting OCR | — | — | Yes |
| Desktop app and offline consultation mode | — | — | Yes |
Identical on all three, outside the table: patients free and unlimited, no setup fees, no per-note charges, migration included, a 14-day trial. Essential has no full audit trail and no ambient scribe — we would rather write that limit down than let it be discovered after signature.
CNAM, up to the bordereau
The act is entered at check-in. After the consultation the invoice is generated showing the patient share, the CNAM share and the CNAM code, and the bordereau is generated from that invoice. A bordereau is the summary slip grouping the acts claimed from the fund. Conveyance of that file to the caisse stays with the practice: Doctopass does not teletransmit.
AI CNAM auto-coding, which proposes the nomenclature code, is Premium-only and belongs with that gate every time it is named. We will not publish a list of official rejection reasons; the one that matters is your caisse's. The steps are set out in CNAM billing and the bordereau.
Arabic and French, both directions
A Tunisian practice works in two languages, and the software has to work in both on the patient side — otherwise the translation lands on the secretary.
The interface runs in French, Arabic and English, Arabic rendered right-to-left rather than as a left-to-right layout with Arabic words in it, and the patient portal is trilingual on all three plans. Underneath, exactly twenty specialty modules sit over one shared record, one calendar and one billing engine.
Switching without stopping
Decide three things before signing: what migrates, how, and when. Rarely everything — decide whether the patient file, the history, current treatments and a bounded window of past consultations move, and where you put that window.
Migration is included at no charge. Where the archive is paper, the "Zero-Effort" Paper Digitization Service is a separate add-on that works with any plan: the archive is picked up, logged box by box, and the originals returned. In-product handwriting OCR is a different product and sits in Premium. We publish no figure for how long this takes; count your own boxes.
The last decision is the exit. A full record exports as structured JSON with the generated PDFs. Ask any vendor — this one included — to run that export in front of you.
Worth remembering
Test any product with four checks: the record and the calendar in one tool, both languages including the patient side, an invoice that splits the patient share from the CNAM share, and an export performed in front of you. Run them on your own files, before signature. Doctopass constitutes the CNAM file up to the bordereau; it does not teletransmit it.
Frequently asked
Do I need software built specifically for Tunisia?
Not as a matter of principle, but three requirements decide it: billing that constitutes the CNAM file up to the bordereau, an interface and patient portal in Arabic and French, and a real mobile app for doctor, patient and secretary. Test any candidate against those three.
What happens to my consultations when the connection drops?
Offline consultation mode, with automatic sync when the network returns, is Premium-only; it is not on the other two plans, and we would rather write that limit down than let it be discovered after signature. If outages are common where you practise, ask for one to be simulated in the demonstration.
Can I get my records out if I leave?
Yes: a full record exports as structured JSON with the generated PDFs. Demand a demonstrated export before signature — without one you are choosing an owner for your records, not software.
What does a seat actually cost?
69 DT for Essential, 159 DT for Pro and 269 DT for Premium — per doctor, per month, collected annually. Patients are free and unlimited on all three; secretary seats run 1, 3 and 5; the free trial is 14 days. The breakdown sits on the per-doctor pricing page.
The best product is not the one with the longest feature list, it is the one that leaves the fewest things to re-enter. To judge that on evidence rather than a brochure, request a 30-minute demo — bring three real bordereaux and one paper file.