How to get a prescription online in the EU: the complete guide

Getting a prescription online in the EU is legal and it is fast, but it does not work the way most people picture it. You are not buying a prescription. You are paying for a medical consultation, and the prescription is the outcome if the doctor judges the treatment appropriate. When they judge it is not, there is no prescription — and that is when the fee is refunded.

This guide covers the real process: what can and cannot be handled this way, what each consultation costs, what makes a doctor approve or decline, and what the prescription is actually worth at a pharmacy in another EU country.

How it works, step by step

1. You pick the treatment area and complete a medical questionnaire (2-3 minutes). The questions branch on your answers, so you only answer what applies to you.
2. An EU-licensed doctor reviews your case individually. Average turnaround is under 4 hours, and always within 24.
3. You get the decision in writing in your account, with an email notification. If approved, the electronic prescription arrives in the same place.
4. You go to a pharmacy with the prescription and pay for the medicine there. Hi-Doctor does not sell, dispense or ship medication.

There is no video call and no phone consultation — the whole process is asynchronous, and the clinical decision is made on what you answer in the questionnaire.

What can be treated, and what each consultation costs

Each area has its own questionnaire and its own price. Hi-Doctor consults with EU residents; you can start directly with yours:

If the doctor does not approve treatment, the consultation fee is refunded in full. The medicine is always paid separately, at the pharmacy.

What this route cannot solve

Worth saying early so it does not waste your time. An asynchronous consultation is not for:

• Emergencies. Chest pain, breathing difficulty, bleeding, sudden neurological symptoms — that is emergency care, not a questionnaire.
• Anything needing examination or tests. If the diagnosis depends on listening to your chest, examining you, or bloods you do not have, the doctor will tell you to be seen in person.
• Medicines outside the catalogue. Hi-Doctor does not prescribe anxiolytics, opioids, stimulants or other controlled substances through this service.
• Severe or worsening disease. Nodular, scarring acne, for example, is referred to in-person care rather than treated with a topical.

A reasoned no is a useful outcome too: it saves you starting a treatment that was not right for you, and the fee comes back.

What makes a doctor approve or decline

It is not an algorithm and it is not automatic. What weighs most, across every area:

The prescription at a pharmacy, in Spain and beyond

The prescription is a Spanish private electronic prescription, digitally signed. You receive it as a PDF in your account and by email.

In Spain, the pharmacy scans the QR code, validates it against the central registry and dispenses the product on the prescription.

Elsewhere in the EU it works differently, and it is worth understanding before you travel with it. The prescription carries the elements Commission Implementing Directive 2012/52/EU requires for cross-border prescriptions: patient identification, prescriber identification and country, and the medicine by its international nonproprietary name. Directive 2011/24/EU requires each Member State to recognise a prescription issued in another Member State for a medicine authorised on its territory, and the pharmacist dispenses the locally marketed equivalent of the same active ingredient.

That said: recognition is not automatic and not guaranteed. The pharmacist keeps the right to refuse, and practice varies between countries. If you will collect outside Spain, plan for that possibility.

Before you travel with a prescription, four things make the difference at the counter:

• Carry it printed as well as on your phone. Some pharmacies outside Spain cannot scan a Spanish QR code and will work from the printed document.
• Know your medicine's international name. Brand names differ between countries; the INN on the prescription is what the pharmacist matches.
• Bring photo ID that matches the prescription. If someone else will collect the medicine for you, check the pharmacy's identification and authorisation requirements beforehand.
• Ask before you need it. A pharmacy can tell you whether it stocks the equivalent and whether it will dispense on a foreign prescription, which is better learnt a day early than on the last day of a trip.

Buying prescription medicines online: what the law says

An online medical consultation is one thing, and it is legal. Buying the medicine over the internet is another. In Spain, Royal Legislative Decree 1/2015 bans "the sale, by correspondence and by electronic means, of medicines and medical devices subject to prescription". Legal online sale is limited to medicines that do not require a prescription, through registered pharmacies.

That is why Hi-Doctor does not sell or ship medication: the consultation ends in a medical decision and, where appropriate, a prescription that a pharmacy dispenses. Any site offering you a prescription medicine without asking for a prescription is operating outside the law, and you have no way to verify what arrives.