Before-and-after photos for aesthetics clinics, off phones

Before-and-after photos for toxin and filler often sit on the practitioner's own phone, backed up to a personal cloud next to family photos, and get found by scrolling at the review appointment. If a clinic does 40 treatments a month and moving each set of photos to a laptop folder takes 4 minutes, that's 160 minutes, plus 3 minutes finding them for each of 20 reviews (60 minutes): 220 minutes, about 3.7 hours a month. A lost phone also means lost patient photos.

MERIDIQ is cloud patient record software for aesthetic and skin clinics, with UK support, used on a desktop, tablet or phone. Its Patient Records module, $29£22€26A$42C$41 per user a month or $281£211€251A$405C$397 a year, lists photo management to upload, store and compare before-and-after images in the patient record, along with treatment note templates, consent forms with e-signatures and an online registration portal. MERIDIQ says patient data is encrypted and stored on servers in the EU or EEA, with role-based access and audit logging. Take photos on a clinic-owned tablet, file them straight into the patient's record, and compare them side by side at the review. The practitioner decides what the photos show and records the outcome; the software only stores and lines up the images.

A clinic in Harrogate with a nurse prescriber and one aesthetic practitioner does about 40 toxin and filler treatments a month and 20 reviews. They buy a clinic tablet and add MERIDIQ Patient Records for both, paid yearly, keeping their existing booking system.

About $150£113€134A$217C$212 a month of practitioner time saved, against $47£35€42A$67C$66 to $59£44€52A$84C$83 for MERIDIQ for 2 users. That's 220 minus 50 minutes, 170 minutes or about 2.8 hours a month, at an assumed $53£40€48A$77C$75 an hour. MERIDIQ Patient Records is $281£211€251A$405C$397 a user a year (about $47£35€42A$67C$66 a month for 2) or $29£22€26A$42C$41 a user a month ($59£44€52A$84C$83 for 2); the page doesn't mention VAT. The tablet is extra, and the bigger gain is health photos no longer sitting on personal phones.

1. 1Read MERIDIQ's privacy policy, ask for its data processing agreement, and record your assessment of storing health photos there before you upload any.
2. 2Buy a clinic-owned tablet or phone for photos, with a passcode, and agree that no clinical photo is taken on a personal device again.
3. 3Add a photo consent section to your consent form, signed in MERIDIQ: one consent for the clinical record, and a separate one before any photo of a non-prescription treatment is used on your website or social media.
4. 4Agree a standard photo set for each treatment (angles, lighting, plain background), so the before and after images can be compared fairly.
5. 5Move existing photos from personal phones into the right records, then delete them from the phones and from any personal cloud backups.
6. 6At each review, open the photos in the record, compare them with the patient, and write the outcome in the treatment notes.

• Photos linked to a named patient reveal their treatment, and the ICO counts data that reveals something about someone's health as health data, special category under UK GDPR. A nurse prescriber's NMC Code also asks for clear, accurate records (standard 10) and confidentiality (standard 5); other prescribers follow the GMC, GDC or GPhC.
• Moving photos into MERIDIQ only helps if the copies on phones, laptops and personal cloud backups are deleted too.
• MERIDIQ's FAQ says there's no integration with other booking systems and no export of all records at once, only one patient's file at a time. Plan how you'd leave before you start, and expect to type patient details into both systems if you keep your booking tool.
• Photo consent for the record isn't consent for marketing. And the ASA's advice is that before-and-after photos of botulinum toxin treatment are likely to be seen as an efficacy claim, which isn't permitted for a prescription-only medicine, so keep those photos in the record and out of your marketing.