Martin Klässner

Martin Klässner is Managing Director of medudoc. As a serial entrepreneur, he achieved one of the largest exits of a young tech company in Austria with the sale of has.to.be (2021). As an investor, he supports more than 25 medtech companies and brings this perspective directly into medudoc's product development — with the aim of consistently digitalising the preoperative patient intake process in hospitals.

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• Articles & guides

  Validated risk scores in premedication: RCRI, Duke Activity Status Index, Apfel score

  Several validated scores are used in premedication to estimate risks before a procedure: the Revised Cardiac Risk Index (RCRI) for cardiac complications, the Duke Activity Status Index (DASI) for functional capacity and the Apfel score for the risk of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV). What all three scores have in common is that their validity depends on the completeness of the underlying medical history data.

  October 28, 2026 · 5 min read
• Law & regulation

  Informed consent 2026: what has changed legally for physicians and hospitals

  The basic framework of informed consent is stable, but the requirements for evidence, individualisation and documentation are rising. In Germany, the treating party bears the burden of proof for a proper consent discussion (§ 630h(2) BGB); general template forms are not sufficient if there are particular risk factors. Since August 2026, the transparency obligations of the EU AI Act also apply, for example to chatbots and AI-generated content. Common errors are missing proof of timing, standard forms without individualisation, undocumented conversations, ignored language barriers and analogue archiving.

  October 28, 2026 · 9 min read
• Law & regulation

  Legally sound patient education in 2025: why comprehensive information is indispensable today – insights from current case law and digital innovation

  Under both German and Austrian law, patient information must be complete, individual, comprehensible and provable (Germany: Sections 630a–630e of the German Civil Code, BGB; Austria: ABGB and patients' rights). Courts examine not only whether patients were informed, but how individually and how well this was documented. This includes rare but serious risks and genuine treatment alternatives. Digital patient education can strengthen comprehensibility and documentation; the personal consent discussion with a physician remains mandatory.

  October 18, 2026 · 5 min read
• Articles & guides

  Why the medical history is the blind spot in digitalising the surgical process

  In many hospitals, patient education and consent are already digital, but the medical history is still taken on paper. In the pre-anaesthesia clinic in particular, this leads to follow-up questions, media discontinuities and delays in the OR schedule; it also removes the basis for individualised patient education. An end-to-end pre-admission process therefore begins with a structured digital medical history at home, whose data flows on into the HIS and into patient education.

  October 15, 2026 · 9 min read
• Articles & guides

  Digitalising patient education in everyday hospital practice, rethought

  Many hospital systems work technically but are not user-centred – which is why patient education remains analogue in many places. This article describes four success factors for user-centred digitalisation: understanding real workflows on the ward, verifying what physicians and patients need, developing solutions together with them and testing prototypes early.

  October 15, 2026 · 5 min read
• Articles & guides

  Why an electronic record alone is not enough: structured data instead of a collection of PDFs

  ELGA in Austria and the ePA in Germany solve an important problem: findings, medication plans and physicians' letters are available to patients and treating providers in one place instead of disappearing on paper or in separate practice systems. However, this only solves the question of access – not the question of data quality, i.e. whether ELGA or the ePA contain structured data. If an electronic record essentially remains a collection of scanned or exported PDF documents, the actual work also remains unchanged: every physician has to search the document for the relevant information again. This is exactly where a structured digital medical history comes in.

  October 15, 2026 · 8 min read
• Articles & guides

  Digital patient education: how modern medical practices make “informed consent” legally sound and efficient

  Today, informed consent is a traceable process, not just a signature on a form. Using the combination of medudoc and the practice software Simpleprax as an example, this article shows how medical practices connect medical history, patient education and consent digitally, which legal requirements apply and how the switch succeeds – from system integration through training and data protection to the pilot phase.

  October 15, 2026 · 6 min read
• Articles & guides

  From medical history to patient education: how an end-to-end digital process gives physicians more time for the patients who really need it

  In the conventional pre-admission pathway, all patients go through the same steps up to the face-to-face discussion – regardless of need. A structured digital medical history allows patients to be grouped by risk: low-risk patients are fully prepared digitally, while patients with a complex history receive more time in the discussion. The risk classification prepares the physician's assessment; the decision is made by the physician.

  October 15, 2026 · 8 min read
• Articles & guides

  The psychology of good patient education: how language, visuals and storytelling promote understanding

  Whether patient education is understood depends less on the amount of information than on how it is conveyed. Anxiety and technical language make information harder to understand and remember; relevant, personalised content, clear language, multilingual support, images and a narrative structure improve it. Being able to repeat content strengthens informed self-determination.

  October 15, 2026 · 8 min read
• Articles & guides

  Avoiding duplicate diagnostics through a structured medical history – the cost factor for hospitals and health insurers

  Repeated X-rays, laboratory samples drawn twice, preliminary examinations performed a second time: in the preoperative process, duplicate diagnostics rarely arise because a repeat examination is medically necessary. They arise because existing medical history and findings are lost, incomplete or not available in time at the transition between practice, outpatient clinic and ward. For hospitals, this means double staff and equipment time; for health insurers, double billing for the same clinical question. A structured digital medical history closes exactly this information gap before it leads to unnecessary diagnostics.

  August 13, 2026 · 9 min read
• Articles & guides

  What does a pre-anaesthesia consultation really cost? A health economic calculation.

  From the hospital's perspective, a pre-anaesthesia consultation costs around €60 to €85 in full costs, with a range of €30 to €140 depending on the hospital and the case. If patients' time is included, the total societal costs amount to €130 to €180 per case. No systematic, published calculation of these costs exists in the German-speaking countries so far – the following model calculation closes this gap on the basis of current literature.

  July 27, 2026 · 11 min read
• Articles & guides

  The consent sheet is not a form, but the result of a process

  With medudoc, a digital informed consent sheet is not created by selecting a suitable form from a library, but generated automatically from upstream data: the medical history, type of procedure and individual risk profile come together to produce the patient-specific Informed Consent Sheet (IC Sheet). The sheet is thus the end product of a data flow – not the starting point of a form-filling process.

  July 10, 2026 · 8 min read
• Articles & guides

  Mallampati classification and digital medical history: why airway assessment stays in the hospital

  The Mallampati classification is a visual examination of the oral cavity that a trained person performs directly on the seated patient — it cannot be collected via a digital questionnaire. medudoc therefore supports airway assessment where a smart digital medical history is strongest: in the structured recording of the patient's history and in early, individual patient education on anaesthetic techniques and alternatives. The physical airway examination itself — including the Mallampati classification — continues to be performed in person by the physician at admission.

  June 30, 2026 · 9 min read
• Law & regulation

  Informed consent in Austria: legal framework, practice and challenges for medical staff

  In Austria, medical treatment is only permissible with valid consent (§§ 252–255 ABGB); without it, treatment is in principle unlawful, even if it was medically indicated. Consent requires oral, comprehensible and timely information about the nature and aim of the treatment, its risks, alternatives, prospects of success and the consequences of not treating. For hospitals, §§ 5a and 8 KAKuG also apply; there, § 10 KAKuG requires the patient information to be documented, while § 51 ÄrzteG sets out physicians' general duty to document. Consent sheets and videos supplement the physician's discussion, but do not replace it.

  June 24, 2026 · 8 min read
• Articles & guides

  Preoperative admission process: where physician time is lost — and how that is changing

  In the preoperative admission process, physician time is lost at three points: before the appointment through incomplete medical history forms, in the consent discussion through standard content repeated every day, and afterwards through media discontinuities in consent and HIS handover. In a prospective study at University Hospital Würzburg, median physician discussion time before cholecystectomy fell by 81% with video-assisted patient education; understanding and satisfaction remained high. The greatest effect comes from a process planned digitally from end to end.

  June 23, 2026 · 6 min read
• Law & regulation

  Why generic consent sheets become a liability risk in hospitals

  Under Section 630e of the German Civil Code (BGB), patient information must be tailored to the specific patient. Generic consent sheets document that information was provided, but do not prove that the patient was informed about the risks relevant to them individually. Three sources of risk stand out: lack of relevance to the individual risk profile, outdated content and foreign-language versions that are not kept in sync with the German version. Consent documents generated individually for each patient address all three.

  June 23, 2026 · 7 min read
• Law & regulation

  KHAG funding eligibility: classification of the medudoc workflow platform

  A short legal opinion by the law firm Lyck+Pätzold. healthcare.recht concludes that the medudoc platform may, under certain conditions, be eligible for funding under the German Hospital Care Improvement Act (KHVVG) — above all in funding category 3 (telemedical network structures). What matters is not the individual function, but its integration into medical care processes, cross-facility structures and a specific transformation project. FTB 2 and FTB 5 may be relevant in individual cases; for FTB 6, the opinion sees no direct eligibility for funding.

  April 26, 2026 · 7 min read
• News

  Digital pre-anaesthesia: why 2026 is becoming a turning point for preoperative workflows

  Preoperative processes rarely fail for lack of tools, but because existing processes are merely mapped digitally instead of being redesigned. At DMEA 2026, medudoc presented a new platform generation that combines digital medical history, capture of findings, individualised video-assisted patient education and electronic consent in one continuous workflow. This turns the pre-anaesthesia clinic from a bottleneck into a unit that can be planned.

  March 30, 2026 · 7 min read
• Articles & guides

  Why generic medical patient education videos are not enough

  Generic patient education videos cover a type of procedure across the board and are therefore either too general or too long. Under § 630e BGB, however, patient information must be tailored to the procedure and the individual situation; too much irrelevant content also makes it harder to understand. Modular video sequences combine standardised building blocks with individual relevance. Videos complement the physician's discussion; they do not replace it.

  March 7, 2026 · 8 min read
• Articles & guides

  Digital patient education: an implementation guide for hospitals

  Digital patient education is more than a PDF on a tablet: its value comes from modular content matched to the procedure and risk profile, and from a clearly managed process. This guide describes the regulatory framework, the phases from pilot project to routine use and the role of acceptance among physicians and patients. The physician's discussion remains the place for the individual decision.

  March 7, 2026 · 9 min read
• Articles & guides

  Four success factors for introducing digital patient education in everyday hospital practice

  Digital patient education becomes established in everyday hospital practice when four conditions are met: it is developed together with clinical staff, improved iteratively with prototypes and tests, adapted flexibly to the hospital's workflows and embedded in existing processes as a supplement. This article illustrates this using the example of medudoc's video-assisted patient education.

  December 22, 2025 · 4 min read
• News

  Expert evening in Vienna: how digital patient education increases patient throughput

  On February 26, 2026, medudoc hosted an expert evening at Palais Eschenbach in Vienna. Experts from medicine, law and digital health discussed how hospitals can increase patient throughput and relieve staff with digitalised processes for preparing planned procedures – with talks by Prof. Dr. Jochen Werner, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christoph Herbst, Prim. Prof. Dr. Gregor Lindner and Martin Klässner.

  December 19, 2025 · 2 min read
• Articles & guides

  Digital patient education in practice: greater legal certainty, less time pressure

  Under § 630e BGB (Germany) and § 252 ABGB (Austria), patients must be informed individually, comprehensibly and in good time – standard texts alone are not sufficient. Individualised patient education videos convey the standard content in advance, so the physician's discussion can concentrate on individual risks and alternatives. The videos do not replace the personal discussion; they prepare it and make the informed consent process traceable.

  December 16, 2025 · 6 min read
• Articles & guides

  Digital concepts of patient education in ophthalmology

  In this interview, Prof. Dr. med. Lothar Schweigerer describes the challenges of analogue patient education in ophthalmology and the benefits of a fully digital, video-based solution: less time required of those informing patients, consistent content and complete documentation. He explains how patient education with medudoc works, which ophthalmic procedures are covered and how data protection and proof are ensured.

  December 16, 2025 · 6 min read
• Articles & guides

  How modern patient education with video solutions noticeably relieves everyday hospital practice

  Paper-based patient education creates media discontinuities, duplicated effort and uncertainty among patients. Digital systems only solve this if they do more than digitise forms: video-based, individually compiled patient education improves comprehensibility, documents the process and relieves physicians, who can concentrate on individual questions in the discussion.

  December 16, 2025 · 5 min read
• Articles & guides

  Why user-centred digitalisation in hospitals can finally work: a practical example from patient education

  Many digital solutions in healthcare are developed without regard to what physicians actually need and are therefore hardly used. Using the example of video-assisted patient education, which emerged from everyday practice in neurosurgery, this article describes four success factors: development together with physicians and hospitals, prototypes for learning, adaptable technology, and supplementing rather than replacing existing processes.

  December 16, 2025 · 5 min read
• News

  From blue to red: medudoc with new owners, a new team and a new platform strategy

  In November 2025, an investor group led by the make visions family office acquired a majority stake in medudoc and contributed additional capital. The management team was expanded, and the brand is changing from blue to red. Strategically, medudoc is evolving from a provider of medico-legal patient education videos into a platform for patient education, electronic consent and legally sound processes in everyday hospital work.

  November 17, 2025 · 3 min read
• News

  Individualised patient education videos at Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen

  Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen (now hoch Health Ostschweiz) was looking for standardised patient education that frees up physicians' time. After a pilot project with individualised patient education videos from medudoc, the solution was adopted into routine operation and extended to further procedures. Over 92% of the physicians involved no longer want to do without video-assisted patient education; the hospital received the CSS Quality Crystal Award for it.

  November 16, 2025 · 4 min read
• News

  The paperless waiting room: interview with Dr. Arash Zarkesh

  Dr. med. Arash Zarkesh, ophthalmologist and head of practice in Gevelsberg and Ennepetal, provides his patients with patient education as a video via link and QR code. They usually watch it at home before the consent discussion, which is shorter as a result; importing it into the patient record eliminates scanning and filing. In the interview, he talks about the rollout, feedback from patients and staff, and further wishes.

  November 5, 2025 · 3 min read