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Social Media for Healthcare Professionals in India: The Dos and Don'ts

8 min read

Most advice on this topic is written by people who have never read the regulations. It tends to say things like “stay professional” and “protect patient privacy,” which is true, useless, and would not have prevented a single one of the cases the Ethics Board actually hears.

The real difficulty is that there is no single rulebook. A doctor posting a reel is simultaneously governed by a professional conduct code, a 1954 criminal statute, consumer protection law, an advertising self-regulator, and a data protection act with a 2027 deadline. Most of them were written for other situations and have been stretched to cover this one.

Here is what actually applies, and what to do about it.

First, know which rulebook is live

This is where almost every article on the subject goes wrong.

In August 2023, the National Medical Commission notified the Registered Medical Practitioner (Professional Conduct) Regulations, 2023. They contained India’s first explicit social media code for doctors — eleven points, quite specific. They were widely reported and are still widely quoted as current law.

Three weeks later, on 23 August 2023, the NMC held those regulations in abeyance by gazette notification. They stated the 2023 Regulations would not be operative until a further gazette notification, and simultaneously adopted the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 with immediate effect.

So the operative professional conduct code is the 2002 Regulations. The 2023 social media rules are not currently enforceable as written.

That is not permission to ignore them. Two reasons. The 2002 Code’s Regulation 6.1 prohibits soliciting patients directly or indirectly, and that provision does most of the same work in broader language. And the withdrawn 2023 text remains the clearest available statement of how the regulator interprets professional conduct online. Treating it as the standard is the conservative and sensible position, because it may well return in a future notification.

Check the current position before you rely on this. Regulations in this area have moved more than once.

The Dos

Do educate. Explaining a condition, correcting a common misconception, describing what a procedure involves and what recovery looks like — this is the category of content the regulator has never objected to, and there is a genuine public health argument for doctors occupying space that would otherwise be filled by people with no training.

Do state your qualifications and registration accurately, and prominently. Under ASCI’s updated influencer guidelines, anyone making technical health claims must hold relevant qualifications and display them clearly. The placement rules are specific: credentials superimposed on visuals or stated at the start of a video, before the main body in text posts, at the very beginning in audio. Doctors generally clear this bar on substance. Many fail it on presentation.

Do keep records of what you posted and when. If a complaint is filed, the post as it existed matters, and an edited or deleted post is a worse position than an accurate archive.

Do disclose any commercial relationship. If a device company, hospital, pharmacy or supplement brand gave you anything — money, product, travel, or a free device — the post needs a clear label. ASCI’s approved labels include Ad, Sponsored, Collaboration and Partnership, and the guidance is explicit that a disclosure buried in hashtags or hidden behind “see more” does not count.

Do redirect clinical questions off the platform. When someone describes symptoms in a comment or a DM, the correct response is to direct them to a proper teleconsultation or an in-person appointment. The Telemedicine Practice Guidelines, 2020 sit inside the 2002 Regulations and govern what a valid remote consultation looks like. An Instagram DM is not one.

Do check what your marketing agency is doing in your name. Responsibility for the account sits with the registered practitioner. “The agency posted it” has never been a defence, and agencies routinely produce exactly the content that creates exposure — before-and-afters, testimonials, superlatives.

The Don’ts

Don’t post patient photographs, scans or procedure footage. This is the single most common violation and the one practitioners most often believe is fine. It is not fine even when the face is cropped, even when the name is removed, and even when the patient has said yes verbally.

Two separate problems. Professionally, the withdrawn 2023 text was explicit that images of cured patients and procedure footage showing impressive results should not be shared under any circumstances, and once posted, an image becomes data held by the platform. Legally, patient images are personal data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, whose Rules were notified in November 2025 with core obligations falling due on 13 May 2027. Consent under that framework must be specific and informed. A general consent signed at admission for treatment and records is not consent to publish on a public account.

If you have a genuinely instructive case, the route is a journal, a conference, or a closed professional forum, with documented, purpose-specific consent.

Don’t post testimonials or success stories. Patient testimonial content — including the format where the doctor appears alongside the patient — reads as solicitation, and solicitation is prohibited under the operative 2002 Code.

Don’t run before-and-after content. Common in aesthetics, dermatology, dentistry, bariatrics and hair restoration, and squarely in the highest-risk category. It is advertising treatment outcomes, it implies a result the next patient may not get, and it is the format that draws complaints.

Don’t buy followers, likes, or ranking. Purchasing engagement, paying for algorithmic placement, or using apps that charge for higher ratings was named directly in the 2023 text and falls under indirect solicitation in the 2002 Code. It is also trivially detectable.

Don’t diagnose or prescribe in public. Answering “what should I take for this” in a comment thread is prescribing without a consultation, without a record, and without an examination.

Don’t make claims that touch the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act. The Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 prohibits advertisements suggesting the diagnosis, cure or prevention of a schedule of specified conditions. This is criminal statute, not a professional guideline, and it applies regardless of your qualifications. Content promising to cure or reverse listed conditions is the exposure to take most seriously.

Don’t use superlatives. Best, leading, top, number one, painless, guaranteed, world-class. These are unverifiable claims about a professional service and they attract attention under both the conduct code and consumer protection law. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 makes endorsers liable for misleading advertisements in their own right.

Don’t discuss identifiable colleagues, employers or institutions in a dispute. Grievances about a hospital, a senior, or another practitioner are professional matters with professional forums. Posted publicly, they create defamation exposure and a conduct question at once.

The grey zones, where judgement actually matters

The rules above are relatively clear. These are the ones people get wrong in good faith.

Educational content that functions as advertising. A carousel explaining knee replacement is education. The same carousel ending with your clinic’s booking link and the observation that most patients walk within a day is advertising with an educational preamble. The test the regulator effectively applies is whether the content exists to inform or to acquire. Be honest with yourself about which it is, because a reviewer will be.

Google reviews. Organic reviews are a normal part of being a business. Soliciting them from patients, incentivising them, or running review campaigns starts to look like the paid-ranking problem in another form.

Your personal account. There is no meaningful separation. A registered practitioner’s political posts, arguments and jokes are attributable to a registered practitioner. The 2023 text asked for communication that is truthful, respectful and professional, without limiting that to clinical content.

Anonymised case discussion. Genuinely rare-condition posts can identify a patient through the combination of condition, location and timing, even with no name and no image. In a small city with one specialist unit, “anonymised” often is not.

Non-medical health content. Nutrition, fitness and wellness posts by a doctor carry the authority of the qualification. ASCI’s framework distinguishes technical claims, which require relevant qualification, from generic awareness content. An MBBS is not automatically a qualification in every adjacent field, and posting outside your competence with your medical credential attached is a real risk.

If you are not a doctor

The NMC governs registered medical practitioners. Other healthcare professionals answer to their own councils — the Dental Council of India, the Indian Nursing Council, the Pharmacy Council of India, and the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions — each with its own conduct code and its own position on advertising.

The statutory layers, though, apply to everybody. The Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, the Consumer Protection Act, the DPDP Act and ASCI’s guidelines do not care which register you are on.

The short version

The safest posture is easy to state and harder to follow. Educate freely. Never show a patient. Never claim an outcome. Disclose every commercial relationship. Take clinical questions off the platform.

Most practitioners who get into difficulty were not being cynical. They posted a grateful patient’s message, or a striking before-and-after, or a comment that read as reassurance and functioned as a prescription. The content felt generous at the time. That is precisely why the categories are worth knowing in advance rather than working out afterwards.

Sources and further reading

This article is general information, not legal advice. Regulations in this area have changed repeatedly since 2023 and may have changed again. Verify the current position with the NMC or your council, and take qualified legal advice before relying on any of it.