States » NorthPosted at: Oct 8 2026 10:28AM


NMC drops regulatory hammer on medical commercialization: AI ads, "Miracle Cure" claims, fake reviews

Panchkula, Oct 8 (UNI) The National Medical Commission (NMC) has issued comprehensive guidelines regulating advertising and public communication by hospitals, medical institutions, and registered medical practitioners.
These place stringent restrictions on misleading medical claims, fake or paid reviews, promotional testimonials, referral-linked payments, and certain forms of AI-generated promotional content.
Framed in direct response to a pending Writ Petition before the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India and rooted in the Indian Medical Council Regulations of 2002, the Guidelines on Ethical Advertising and Public Communication take effect immediately. NMC Secretary Dr Raghav Langer issued a Public Notice to all medical establishments in the country.
The medical profession should prevent the commercialisation of healthcare, protect patient interests, and ensure that it is ethical and bring digital healthcare promotion within an ethical regulatory framework.
The guidelines prohibit AI-generated promotional campaigns undertaken for furtherance of commercial interest.
AI-generated promotional content that complies with the guidelines must carry a source mark explicitly indicating it is AI-generated.
Registered medical practitioners and medical institutions cannot use AI to create misleading, deceptive, or unverifiable representations about medical services, treatment outcomes, or professional claims. The guidelines also prohibit the use of AI to fabricate or manipulate patient images, testimonials, voices, or clinical outcomes, or to create synthetic endorsements that represent an actual patient, doctor, or other person.
The NThe NMC further stated that using patient information as input to an AI system must comply with privacy, confidentiality, data protection, and professional ethics requirements. The guidelines prohibit exaggerated, unverifiable and misleading medical claims.
Examples include claims such as “Guaranteed cures”, “Best doctors”, “No.1 Specialist”, “100% success”, “painless treatment”, “Miracle treatment”, and “Exclusive cure”.
Registered medical practitioners are also barred from using personal achievement statistics, treatment success rates or patient numbers in a manner that amounts to prohibited promotional advertising.
The guidelines prohibit the promotional publication of cases, surgical results, “before and after” photographs, celebrity patients, and personal success stories, except when published strictly for scientific or educational purposes, in accordance with prescribed requirements, including anonymisation and consent.
The NMC prohibits doctors and medical institutions from soliciting, purchasing, procuring, or manipulating fake, paid, or misleading patient reviews, ratings, testimonials, endorsements, or recommendations to promote medical services.
Registered medical practitioners are prohibited from requesting or sharing patient testimonials, recommendations, endorsements, or reviews on social media for professional promotion.
The guidelines restrict manipulation of followers, likes, reviews, ratings, testimonials, comments, views, and other digital engagement, as well as manipulation of search rankings, visibility, or algorithms to create a misleading impression of professional standing.
Doctors are also barred from lending their name, signature, photograph, voice or professional status to endorse medicines, medical devices, diagnostic products, health products or other commercial products for advertising purposes.
The guidelines prohibit registered medical practitioners and medical institutions from offering, paying, soliciting, or receiving commissions, rebates, bonuses, gifts, gratuities, referral fees, lead-generation fees, or other consideration linked to referral, recommendation, or procurement of patients, specimens, or materials for diagnosis, treatment, surgery, or other medical services.
The NMC restricts promotional practices that create unnecessary demand for consultations, diagnostic investigations, or medical procedures, including inducements and certain discounts, offers, contests, coupons, gifts, and referral benefits.
The guidelines cover medical advertising and promotional communication through digital platforms and other channels, including websites, social media, influencer campaigns, sponsored posts and other forms of digital communication where the material amounts to advertising.
The NMC makes clear that using a digital platform, advertising agency, influencer, or other intermediary does not absolve a registered medical practitioner or medical institution of responsibility for content it has authorised, commissioned, sponsored, adopted, or knowingly permitted.
The guidelines impose safeguards on the use of patient information, photographs, videos, medical records, clinical images, treatment details and testimonials in public communication.
Patient consent alone does not make a prohibited promotional practice permissible. Where disclosure is legally permitted, prescribed consent and privacy safeguards must be followed.
The guidelines call for measures such as cropping, blurring, or blacking out names, birthmarks, identification marks, and other details to prevent unnecessary patient identification.
The guidelines also prescribe transparency requirements for digital communication by registered medical practitioners.
Doctors communicating via electronic media must provide relevant professional information, including their name, qualifications, and registration details as prescribed by the guidelines.
Medical institutions must ensure appropriate disclosure of professional credentials and registration details of associated registered medical practitioners where applicable.
The guidelines do not prohibit hospitals and medical institutions from providing factual information about their facilities and services.
They may communicate objective and verifiable information such as their name, location, contact details, departments, facilities, equipment, emergency services, accreditation and other permitted institutional information.
Such communication cannot be used to make misleading claims, guarantee treatment outcomes, solicit patients through prohibited inducements, or make unverifiable assertions of superiority.
The guidelines provide for regulatory and disciplinary action against registered
medical practitioners for violations.
Depending on the nature and recurrence of a violation, prescribed measures may include a warning, ethics training, censure, monetary penalty, suspension of registration, and in serious or repeated cases, removal from the medical register, subject to the procedure in the guidelines.
The framework also provides for a show-cause process and an opportunity for the concerned practitioner to respond to allegations before appropriate action is taken.
UNI KK ARN
Tags: #NMC drops regulatory hammer on medical commercialization: AI ads# "Miracle Cure" claims# fake reviews
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