Digitalisation in hospital operations has long ceased to be a nice-to-have. It determines efficiency, patient throughput and a facility’s ability to cope with rising case numbers with limited resources. However, the user-centred development of digital solutions was neglected in healthcare for a long time. At the same time, the experienced provider medudoc shows very clearly what modern patient education can look like today: digital, individualised and consistently aligned with real hospital processes.
Many hospital workflows are still paper-based, even though medical treatment itself takes place at the highest technological level. This break between digital high-end technology in the operating theatre and analogue routine on the ward slows down skilled staff and strains capacity that is actually needed for patient care.
The administrative burden has increased steadily in recent years. According to the MB-Monitor survey, only 8% of responding physicians spent more than three hours a day on administration and documentation in 2013. By 2022, the figure had risen to 32% (see Marburger Bund). Many physicians want to pursue their therapeutic task rather than primarily manage forms. This is precisely where modern digital solutions could provide decisive support.
A particularly clear example is patient education. It is complex in content, legally mandatory and yet in many hospitals has hardly been modernised for decades. Paper forms full of technical terms still set the standard, even though it has long been well documented that audiovisual patient education increases patients’ knowledge of the procedure.
Together with hospitals, medudoc has developed a platform on which physicians can create individualised patient education videos. The content is medically sound, prepared from a medico-legal perspective, easy to understand and tailored to the respective procedures. The solution is already in use in Germany and Switzerland and shows that digitalisation becomes effective in everyday hospital practice when it creates real added value.
Video on YouTube: Digital patient education with medudoc
Success factor 1: digital solutions must be developed together with clinical staff
If digital applications are to be used across specialties, they must be coordinated with different physicians from the outset. Development at medudoc therefore took place in close cooperation with surgical, internal medicine and other specialties. Feedback from everyday hospital practice contributed significantly to making the platform intuitive to use and to reflecting the actual requirements of patient care. This early involvement ensures that new digital workflows are not perceived as an additional burden, but as genuine support.
Success factor 2: iterative work instead of rigid product development
Many hospitals are used to being presented with finished systems. For digital product development, however, this approach is too slow. Prototypes and usability tests are crucial for making real usage scenarios visible. At medudoc, these test phases led to the initial concepts being revised several times and ultimately completely redesigned. This process produced a solution that does not just work in theory, but can be used reliably in hectic everyday hospital practice.
Success factor 3: technology must be adapted flexibly to hospital processes
Hospitals differ greatly in terms of workflows, structures and responsibilities. Successful digitalisation therefore requires systems that can be adapted flexibly. medudoc’s platform allows content, workflows and integrations to be configured individually. As a result, existing processes are not replaced but optimised in a targeted way. This ensures rapid embedding in different specialties and smooth use without additional effort.
Success factor 4: digital solutions only work if they supplement existing processes comprehensively
Digital transformation only takes effect when it is conceived as an integral part of clinical workflows. Video-assisted patient education is moved to exactly the point in the workflow where the need for information is greatest. Patients receive their video before the discussion with the physician and arrive prepared for the personal consent discussion. This can shorten the physician discussion considerably. At University Hospital Würzburg, video-assisted patient education reduced the median physician discussion time before cholecystectomy from 8.1 to 1.5 minutes (−81%). Before colon resection, it fell from 11.9 to 3.3 minutes (−72%). Patients’ understanding and satisfaction remained high (Leicht et al., World J Surg 2026).
medudoc works continuously with hospitals to expand the content further and to support the digitalisation of patient education in the long term. Experience from practice shows that digital solutions are successful when they work intuitively, create real efficiency gains and put patient care at the centre.
