1. The short answer
Require one patient record before you evaluate anything else. A clinic doing wellness and aesthetics is not two clinics. It is one patient with a dose history and an injection map, a lab trend and a photo series, a monthly membership and a package of six. If a product holds one half well and the other half in a text box, it will cost you the thing you bought software to fix.
Everything below is downstream of that. The eleven requirements are what "one record" means in practice, and each one has a way to test it in a demo rather than take on trust.
If you want the longer argument for why the market is shaped this way, that is a separate piece: the EMR problem for clinics doing both.
2. Why this shortlist is harder than the others
Because you are shopping in two categories that do not overlap. Medical EMRs grew out of insurance-billed primary care: a diagnosis, a claim, an encounter that closes. Medspa software grew out of salon booking: a service, a package, a rebooking cadence.
Neither was built for a patient who is on a testosterone protocol and comes in for tox every twelve weeks. So filtering feature lists does not surface a match, and the clinics that go looking usually give up and run two systems — which is how you end up reconciling a membership in one product against a package in another, by hand, on the last day of the month.
That is the real cost, and it is not on any pricing page: the hours someone spends every month making two systems agree about one patient.
3. The eleven requirements
Run this on every product you look at, including ours. Each row has a demo test, because a feature list will tell you a product does something and the test will tell you how well.
| Require | What it means | How to test it in the demo |
|---|---|---|
| 1. One patient record, not two | The dose history and the injection map belong to the same person, on the same timeline. | Ask to see a patient who has both a lab trend and a before/after series. If it takes two logins, it is two systems. |
| 2. Injection mapping with lot capture | Product, units and lot number recorded per site, not as free text in a note. | Ask them to record 24 units across four sites and then find every patient who got that lot. |
| 3. Photo series that survives the angle | Before and after captured in a way that can be compared honestly. | Take two photos from different angles and ask how the system stops you comparing them. |
| 4. Consent tied to the treatment | The form signed for that treatment, on that date, retrievable in one click. | Ask to pull the consent for a treatment given three months ago. |
| 5. Memberships and packages together | Recurring monthly plans and prepaid packages of six, in one balance. | Ask what happens when a member on a monthly plan also buys a package. Watch for two balances. |
| 6. Inventory that moves when you treat | Stock deducted at the point of treatment, not reconciled monthly by hand. | Give a treatment in the demo and ask to see the vial count change. |
| 7. EPCS-ready prescribing | Controlled substances handled to the DEA standard, with the identity proofing that implies. | Ask what their prescriber onboarding actually requires, and how long it takes. |
| 8. Labs as a trend, not a PDF pile | Results parsed into values you can chart across a year. | Ask to see one marker plotted over four draws. |
| 9. Cash-pay billing that is not an afterthought | Card on file, monthly plans, packages, and a receipt that is not an insurance claim. | Ask to run a membership charge and a package purchase for the same patient. |
| 10. A patient app your patients recognise | Booking, messages and results under your name, not the vendor’s. | Ask whose name is on the App Store listing, and who owns the review account. |
| 11. Pricing that does not punish hiring | A flat platform fee, so adding an injector does not change the invoice. | Ask for the price with three providers and again with six. |
4. The one that actually breaks: the shared record
This is where two-category products fail, and it is not obvious in a demo unless you ask for it.
Most products will show you a beautiful injection map. Most will show you a clean lab trend. Very few will show you both belonging to one patient in a way the next clinician can read in ten seconds before walking into the room.
The test is boring and decisive: ask to open a patient who has had four lab draws and three treatment sessions, and ask what the person seeing them next actually sees. If the answer involves switching tabs, opening a second product, or "that lives in the notes", you have found the seam.
Ask the same question about money. A patient on a $199 monthly membership who also bought a package of six treatments has one balance in real life. Ask to see it.
5. What changes when you prescribe
Adding hormones or GLP-1 to an aesthetics practice moves you into a regulated category, and the software question changes with it.
Controlled substances need EPCS, which is not a switch a vendor flips. It means identity proofing for every prescriber, two-factor at the moment of signing, and an audit trail. Ask what their onboarding requires and how long it has taken their last clinic, not whether they support it.
Payments change too. Card processors classify prescribing clinics as high risk, and clinics have had accounts frozen mid-month for it — we wrote up why Stripe and Square shut down GLP-1 and TRT clinics because it kept happening to people who had done nothing wrong.
And if you advertise, certification is likely in your future: what LegitScript certification costs covers the real number and the timeline.
6. Five answers that should end the demo
Not because the product is bad, but because the answer tells you it was built for the other half of your clinic.
"You would use the notes for that." Anything important living in free text is a search you cannot run later. Lot numbers are the clearest case: if a product is recalled, free text will not find your patients.
"That is on the roadmap." Fine for something you do not need yet. Not fine for the thing you are buying the product to do.
"We integrate with X for that." Ask who supports it when it breaks, and whether the patient record still reads as one record. Sometimes the honest answer is yes. Often the integration is a nightly file.
"Pricing is per provider." Workable at two injectors, punishing at six. Ask for both numbers before you decide it does not matter.
"You can export your data any time." Ask what format, and ask to see a real export. There is a large gap between a CSV of demographics and a record you could actually move.
7. If you are already running two systems
The migration question is the one that decides whether you ever leave.
Clinics stay on software they have outgrown because moving looks worse than staying. Usually the fear is bigger than the job, but only if you ask concrete questions early: what comes across, what does not, and who does the work.
We wrote the honest version of that: how to switch EHR without losing patient data, and what actually happens to your data.
One thing worth knowing before you start: if your current system is a certified EHR, US rules give you a free, self-service export of your electronic health information. You do not have to accept a quote to get your own records out.
8. Frequently asked questions
Is a medspa EHR the same as a medical EHR?
No. Medspa products are built around services, packages and rebooking; medical EMRs are built around encounters, diagnoses and claims. A clinic doing both needs one record that holds a dose history and an injection map for the same patient, which is a different requirement from either.
Can I just run two systems?
You can, and many clinics do. The cost is reconciliation: one patient with a membership in one product and a package in another, matched by hand every month, plus a clinical record no single person can read end to end. It works until it is the thing you complain about most.
What does EPCS-ready mean?
That the software is built to the DEA standard for electronically prescribing controlled substances — identity proofing for each prescriber, two-factor at signing, and an audit trail. Ask any vendor what their prescriber onboarding requires in practice and how long it takes; that answer varies far more than the feature checkbox does.
Does Aminova do both?
Yes — that is why we wrote this. Aesthetic charting maps product, units and lot per injection site on a 3D model or a photo of the patient, and it sits on the same record as labs, prescribing, memberships and inventory. We would rather you ran the eleven checks on us than take that sentence at face value.
How is Aminova priced?
A flat platform fee per clinic rather than per provider, so adding an injector does not change the invoice. Add-ons are priced separately and listed on the pricing page.