Prescribing begins with the selection of a drug to prescribe and continues with further selections (from cascading lists and template prescriptions) to define the required attributes of the prescription. Once sufficient information has been defined to determine the type of medication being prescribed (and thus determine which other attributes will be needed), a more detailed prescription form can be displayed.

In most cases, a template prescription can be selected and the set of required fields can then be displayed. However, in the absence of template prescriptions, a step-by-step process can be used to encourage the selection of important attributes (such as dose) from predefined, limited lists.