What is HIMS software?
HIMS (Hospital Information Management System) software is the central record system of a hospital. It registers each patient once and then carries that record through every department — OPD consultation, admission and ward care, laboratory and radiology orders and reports, pharmacy issues and billing — so that each department reads and writes the same patient episode instead of keeping its own register. A HIMS differs from a billing or practice-management tool in that its core object is the clinical episode, not the invoice.
Most Indian hospitals already have software — a billing package at the front desk, a separate pharmacy program, a lab machine that prints its own reports and an Excel sheet for the ward. What they do not have is a hospital information management system: one place where a patient’s information is created once and then flows, so the doctor in the ward sees the lab value the moment it is verified, and the bill already knows about the scan that was done at midnight.
MedKit Care is HIMS software built around that single patient record. Registration creates one patient number used in OPD, IPD, laboratory, radiology, pharmacy and billing. Orders raised by a doctor appear on the lab or imaging worklist; results come back to the patient’s record and to the running bill; pharmacy issues post charges and reduce batch stock in the same step. Each department works on its own screen, but none of them keeps a separate copy of the patient.
Clinical definitions are maintained centrally too. Laboratory tests with their parameters and reference ranges, and radiology studies with their structured report templates, come from a curated platform catalogue; each hospital sets only its own price and chooses which tests and studies it offers. A new hospital therefore starts with report formats that already follow recognised reporting standards rather than building every template from scratch.
What this replaces
The failures below are the reason clinics and hospitals go looking for software in the first place.
The same patient exists five times
Reception, pharmacy, lab and billing each register the patient separately, so one person has several IDs and no department sees the whole history.
Results travel on paper
Lab and radiology reports are printed and carried to the ward, and the doctor acts on a copy that may already be out of date or belong to someone else.
Orders and charges drift apart
A test ordered in the ward is not automatically a line on the bill, so investigations are done and never charged — or charged and never done.
Reference ranges live in each lab’s head
Normal ranges and report formats differ by technician and by shift, so the same value can be flagged on one report and not on another.
Nobody can answer “what happened to this patient?”
Reconstructing a stay for an insurer, an audit or a complaint means pulling files from four departments and matching dates by hand.
Access is all or nothing
A shared login means everyone can see and change everything, and there is no record of who altered a result or a bill.
How MedKit Care handles it
Each capability below is part of the platform, not an add-on quoted separately.
One patient record across departments
A single patient number and episode shared by OPD, IPD, laboratory, radiology, pharmacy and billing, with the full visit history on one screen.
OPD and IPD in the same system
Consultations, prescriptions and follow-ups in OPD; admission against a bed, ward notes, treating and consulting doctors, advances and discharge in IPD.
Laboratory information system (LIS)
Test orders from OPD or ward, sample collection and tracking, parameter-wise result entry against age- and sex-specific reference ranges, verification, critical-value flags and versioned reports.
Radiology information system (RIS)
Imaging orders on a worklist, structured report templates per study (including BI-RADS, PI-RADS and similar categories where they apply), verification and signed report PDFs.
Pharmacy and inventory
Batch- and expiry-tracked stock, issues against admitted patients and counter sales, with each issue posting to the patient’s bill.
Billing that follows the record
Consultations, bed days, procedures, investigations and pharmacy post to one running bill per episode, with GST invoices and cash, card and UPI collections.
Role-based access and audit trail
Reception, doctors, nurses, lab and radiology staff, pharmacists and accounts each see only their own screens, and changes to records are logged with who made them.
Cloud hosted
Runs in a browser on existing computers and tablets — no server room, no per-terminal licence and no on-site database administrator.
The workflow, end to end
- 1
Register once
The patient is registered with name, phone, age and sex, and receives one patient number used everywhere in the hospital.
- 2
Consult or admit
The OPD doctor consults and prescribes, or the patient is admitted to a bed with a treating doctor and an advance recorded.
- 3
Order investigations
Lab tests and imaging studies are ordered from the consultation or the ward and appear on the laboratory and radiology worklists.
- 4
Results return to the record
Verified lab values and signed radiology reports attach to the patient episode, with abnormal and critical results flagged.
- 5
Treat and dispense
Medicines are issued from pharmacy stock against the patient, and ward care is recorded as it happens.
- 6
Bill and discharge
Every charge generated along the way is already on the bill; the patient is discharged against a settled invoice and a summary built from the record.
What changes
- One patient number from registration to discharge
- Lab and radiology results on the record, not on paper
- Investigations and medicines billed from the same action that recorded them
- Report formats and reference ranges maintained centrally, not per technician
- A logged history of who changed what
- No server, no per-terminal licence
Who it is for
- Nursing homes and 10–100 bed hospitals
- Multi-specialty hospitals with in-house lab and imaging
- Hospitals replacing separate billing, pharmacy and lab programs
- Diagnostic-heavy single-specialty hospitals
- Hospital administrators and medical superintendents
What to look for in HIMS software
A HIMS demo always looks complete, because every screen exists. The difference shows up in how information moves between those screens once a real patient goes through them.
- Does a test ordered by the doctor reach the lab worklist and the bill without being typed again?
- Are reference ranges applied by the patient’s age and sex, or is one range printed for everyone?
- Is a verified or signed report locked, with any amendment kept as a new version?
- Can each role see only its own screens, and is every change to a result or bill logged?
- Is there one patient number across OPD, IPD, lab, radiology and pharmacy?
- Can you export your complete patient and billing data if you ever leave?
Frequently asked questions
What does HIMS stand for?+
HIMS stands for Hospital Information Management System — the software that records and shares patient information across a hospital’s departments. The terms HIS (Hospital Information System) and HMIS are used for the same kind of system.
What is the difference between HIMS and hospital management software?+
The terms overlap and are often used interchangeably. “HIMS” puts the emphasis on the patient information shared between departments — orders, results, reports and the clinical record — while “hospital management software” is often used for the operational side such as admissions, beds and billing. MedKit Care covers both on the same record.
Does MedKit Care include a laboratory and radiology module?+
Yes. The laboratory module handles orders, samples, parameter-wise results with reference ranges, verification and reports, and the radiology module handles imaging orders, structured reports and signed PDFs. Which modules a hospital can use depends on its plan.
Can we move from our current billing or pharmacy software to MedKit Care in stages?+
Yes. Most hospitals start with registration, OPD and billing, then add IPD, pharmacy, laboratory and radiology department by department, so staff are trained on one area at a time.
Is HIMS software only for large hospitals?+
No. MedKit Care is priced per hospital with modules enabled by plan, so a small nursing home can run registration, IPD and billing and add laboratory or radiology later without changing systems.
How is MedKit Care HIMS priced?+
MedKit Care is an annual subscription per hospital rather than a per-user licence, starting at ₹8,999 a year for the smallest plan and rising with the modules and units enabled. The full comparison is on the pricing page.
Explore related MedKit Care solutions
Serving clinics and hospitals across India, with dedicated support in Bihar and Maharashtra. See plans and pricing.
See it on your own workflow
A 20-minute walkthrough using your clinic or hospital's actual process — not a generic slide deck.