Online doctor with prescription

What an online doctor can and cannot do

A doctor working from a written assessment can do a good deal: review a history, check current medicines and allergies, weigh interactions, read recent test results you supply, and issue a private prescription where the picture is clear and low-risk. What that doctor cannot do is listen to your chest, look in an ear, feel an abdomen or take your blood pressure, and no questionnaire substitutes for those.

That boundary sets the sensible use of the service. It works for continuing a treatment that is already established and stable, where the question is supply rather than diagnosis. It works poorly for a new symptom that needs examining, for anything acute and worsening, and for conditions where the safe answer depends on a physical finding. A responsible service declines those rather than guessing, which is why an assessment can end in a refusal, and why the refusal is the service working as intended rather than failing.

How the MEDINOW assessment works

You fill in a medical questionnaire and a doctor reads it and answers in writing, in his own time. There is no video consultation, no phone appointment and no live chat, and we do not describe the service as anything else. If the doctor needs more, he asks for it in writing, which typically means a photograph of a previous prescription, a recent test result or a letter from a clinic.

The doctor is lek. Damian Wojno, registered in Poland, PWZ no. 3211301. Under Article 3(d) of Directive 2011/24/EU, a doctor providing a service from another member state is treated as providing it in the state where he is established and is subject to that state's rules. He is not on the Irish Medical Council register, does not hold an Irish practice address and does not take part in Irish state schemes, which is a limit worth knowing before you start rather than after. MEDINOW sells the medical assessment and the document that may follow from it. We never sell, supply or post medicines.

Which medicines are excluded

Some groups of medicine are outside this route entirely, and no questionnaire changes that. Opioid painkillers, benzodiazepines, Z-drugs for sleep, stimulants, gabapentinoids such as pregabalin and gabapentin, and medical cannabis are not prescribed by MEDINOW. Article 11(6) of Directive 2011/24/EU allows member states to keep narcotic and psychotropic medicines out of the cross-border prescription route, and Irish rules keep controlled drugs out of it as well.

A second exclusion is practical rather than legal: medicines that are not authorised in Ireland cannot be dispensed by an Irish pharmacy even on a valid prescription, so a prescription is written using the international non-proprietary name of the substance and a strength and form available here. A third group is clinical. Treatments that need recent blood tests, in-person monitoring or specialist supervision, including the first prescription of a new long-term medicine, belong with a doctor who can arrange those tests. Expect a written refusal rather than a workaround in all three cases.

How the prescription reaches you

Where a prescription is appropriate, it is issued as a PDF document carrying the fields set out in the Annex to Directive 2012/52/EU: your name and date of birth, the date of issue, the prescriber's name, professional qualification, work address with the country named, an email address and a telephone number with an international dialling code, a handwritten signature, and the medicine by international non-proprietary name with the strength, the pharmaceutical form, the quantity and the dosage. It is sent to the email address you gave.

You bring it to a pharmacy of your choice together with photo identification, because the pharmacist has to match the person collecting to the name on the prescription. There is no PIN code and no national patient number in this route; the document and your identity document are the whole mechanism. Many pharmacists prefer to handle a printed copy, so it is sensible to print it before you go. We do not name, recommend or link any particular pharmacy.

Will an Irish pharmacy dispense an EU prescription

It may, and the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland publishes guidance for pharmacists on dispensing prescriptions issued by prescribers in other EU and EEA member states, which sets out what the pharmacist should check. That guidance exists precisely because these prescriptions turn up at the counter and pharmacists needed a settled answer. What it does not do is oblige anybody: the pharmacist retains professional judgement and can decline.

The practical predictors of a smooth transaction are dull ones. The document should be complete and legible, the medicine should be named by its international non-proprietary name and be authorised in Ireland, the quantity and dosage should be stated, contact details for the prescriber should be present, and controlled drugs should not be on it. If a pharmacist declines, ask why: an incomplete field can sometimes be corrected, whereas a professional judgement about the medicine will not change by asking again elsewhere. Never treat a prescription as a guarantee of supply before you have spoken to a pharmacy.

What it costs and what the fee covers

MEDINOW charges 19.90 euro for a repeat prescription assessment covering treatment you are already on, and 29.90 euro for a weight management assessment. Those are our fees for the medical assessment. The price of any medicine is set by the pharmacy that dispenses it and is entirely separate.

The fee covers the medical assessment itself, not the issuing of a document. If the doctor declines on medical grounds, the fee is refunded. If you do not send the documentation the doctor asks for, the assessment counts as carried out and the fee is not refunded. Two things follow from that. First, answer the questionnaire fully the first time, because a thin history is the most common reason an assessment stalls. Second, if a document is requested, send it, since ignoring the request is the one scenario in which you pay and receive nothing. We do not promise a turnaround time and would rather say so than invent one, so order before you run out rather than on the last day.

When to see a GP in person or go to A&E instead

Some things need a room, not a form. Chest pain, breathlessness at rest, one-sided weakness, difficulty speaking, a first seizure, severe abdominal pain, a rash that does not fade under pressure, confusion in someone unwell, or a serious injury: ring 112 or 999, or go to the nearest Emergency Department. Thoughts of harming yourself are an emergency too, and Samaritans answer free on 116 123 at any hour.

Below that threshold, a GP or the out-of-hours GP service is still the right destination for a new symptom that needs examining, for a child who is unwell, in pregnancy, for anything that has been getting worse over days, and for the first prescription of a long-term medicine. Registering with a GP practice remains worth doing even if you rarely need one, because continuity of records is what makes every later decision safer, including ours.

Who wrote this page

This page was written by the MEDINOW editorial team and reviewed by lek. Damian Wojno, a doctor registered in Poland, PWZ no. 3211301. Reviewed on 29 August 2026.

It is general information about how prescribing works across borders in Ireland, not a diagnosis and not a substitute for an assessment by a doctor who can examine you. Where this page describes a rule, the authoritative text is in the source named beside it rather than in our summary of it.

How this page was put together: the medicines, categories and rules described here were checked against the sources listed below rather than written from memory, and any figure we could not verify at source was left out instead of estimated. Where Irish practice differs from the rules of another country, the Irish position is the one stated on this page, and the Irish regulators named here are the HPRA for medicines, the HSE for health services, the PSI for pharmacy and the Irish Medical Council for doctors practising in Ireland. Corrections are welcome by email and are made to the page rather than argued about.