Ask a delegate at a medical conference why they are there and a good number will mention the credit before the programme. That makes it part of what you sold them, and makes the evidence behind it your problem rather than the speaker's. It is also the part of a medical event most likely to be run on a signature sheet.
Who actually grants the credit
The first thing to be clear about is that you do not award credits. A council does, and you apply to it. In India the requirement itself comes from the top: the National Medical Journal of India records that CME credits have been mandated by the National Medical Commission as part of continuing professional development, with a minimum of 30 credits in 5 years required for renewal of a medical licence.1 The machinery, though, sits with state medical councils, and it differs between them.
Maharashtra is a useful example of what that machinery looks like. Its council runs a continuing professional development portal that publishes lists of fully accredited organisations, partially accredited organisations and case-to-case organisations, alongside lists of accredited speakers and of upcoming physical programmes and webinars.2 Read those categories as a hint about sequencing: accreditation attaches to the organisation and to the speakers, in advance, not to a certificate you print afterwards.
Programmes can also be monitored: the same journal piece notes that CMEs can be observed by observers of the National Medical Commission or the state council,1 and Maharashtra's portal carries an application form for accredited observers.2 Someone may be in your room to check the programme ran as described.
Because this varies, confirm the position with the council your delegates are registered with, early and in writing. Nothing below replaces that conversation.
What counts as evidence
Here is the distinction that decides whether your records survive scrutiny. A door signature proves a person entered a building. Where credits attach to individual sessions rather than to the programme as a whole, that is not the claim you are certifying. Councils differ on which model they use, and session-level records satisfy both, which is why they are the safer standard to build on.
So the record you need ties a named, registered delegate to a session at a specific time: a scan at the session room rather than a list at the entrance, producing a time-stamped row per delegate per session. Three things follow:
Partial attendance becomes answerable. The delegate who arrives twenty minutes into a forty-minute talk is a common case. With session timestamps you can apply whatever rule your council sets. With a door sheet you are guessing, and guessing generously is how accreditation gets withdrawn.
The delegate's identifier is captured once. Medical registration numbers belong on the certificate, so they have to be collected at registration and carried through without being retyped.
The count is defensible. If a council asks how a delegate earned six credits, the answer is a list of sessions with times, not an assurance.
What belongs on the certificate
The test for a certificate is simple: can a council accept it without contacting you? So it should carry the delegate's full name as registered and their medical registration number; the programme title, accrediting council and programme reference; the date and venue; the sessions attended; the credits awarded; and an authorised signature.
The certificate that causes trouble is the generic one: "attended the annual conference", no sessions, no reference number, a name that does not match the delegate's registration. Those come back for reissue weeks later, one email at a time, to someone who has moved on to the next event.
Keeping the records, and deleting them
Attendance records are personal data about identifiable doctors, tied to a professional registration number. Under India's DPDP Act the organiser holding that data has to protect it with reasonable security safeguards and report a breach to the Data Protection Board and to each affected person.3
There is a tension worth planning for. The Act also requires erasure once consent is withdrawn or the purpose is no longer served, including making anyone processing the data on your behalf erase their copies, unless retention is necessary to comply with a law in force.3 Accreditation records are exactly the case where retention may be necessary, and any retention period is more likely to come from your council than from you. So ask the council how long they expect records to be kept, write that answer into your privacy notice as the retention period for this category, and then actually delete on that schedule. We set out the wider checklist in our DPDP compliance guide for event organizers.
Which is why a spreadsheet passed between secretariat, sponsor and agency is a poor fit here: every copy is personal data you remain answerable for. We covered that failure mode in running event registration on a spreadsheet.
Running it on the day
Session scanning creates a queue at every session door, not just the main entrance, and sessions all start at once. The arithmetic is the same as for check-in: capacity has to beat the arrival rate in the few minutes before a session starts, or people miss the opening of the talk they came for. Our check-in sizing guide has the numbers and a calculator, and the reasoning applies per room.
Two things specific to CME sessions. Scan on the way in, not the way out, because delegates leave in one burst and you will lose records. And staff one exceptions point away from the doors for badge problems and registration-number corrections, so a single wrong record does not hold up the room.
Where Aurentex sits
On Premium, session-by-session attendance records are part of the platform today: each delegate is scanned into a session, tied to the same registration record that holds their details, so there is nothing to reconcile afterwards and nothing to retype.
The certificate builder that turns those records into issued CME certificates is marked coming soon on our pricing page, and it is not built yet. We would rather say that here than let you infer otherwise from a feature list. If certificates are the reason you are reading this, talk to us about timing before you plan around it.
What we can do today is capture the evidence underneath properly, which is the part that cannot be reconstructed later. Your first event is free, so a single symposium is a reasonable way to test whether the session records come out the way your council expects.
Common questions
Who grants CME credits in India?
State medical councils, with rules that differ between them. Maharashtra's council, for example, publishes lists of fully, partially and case-to-case accredited organisations and of accredited speakers.2 You apply; you do not award.
What counts as proof a delegate attended a session?
A time-stamped record tying a named, registered delegate to a specific session. A signature sheet at the main entrance proves building entry, not session attendance. Where a council awards credits for the programme as a whole, session records still satisfy it.
How many credits do doctors need?
A minimum of 30 credits in 5 years is reported as required for licence renewal,1 with enforcement and detail sitting at state council level. Confirm with the relevant council.
What should the certificate contain?
Name as registered, medical registration number, programme title, accrediting council and reference, date and venue, sessions attended, credits awarded and an authorised signature.