Press Release
Mar 14, 2025
A visit to the doctor can be reassuring or unsettling. What happens when you do not understand your own medical report or have to wait a long time for your next appointment? When technical terms such as “subdural haematoma” or “malignant neoplasm” raise more questions than answers? Studies show that medical terminology presents a significant barrier for many people. For example, 42.3% of patients do not understand their diagnosis when they are discharged. More than half of the population (54.3%) struggle with health information, whether in doctors’ letters or medical reports.
Yet if people do not understand what is happening to them, they cannot make informed decisions about their health. The Berlin start-up Simply Onno aims to change this.
Its free web service translates medical reports into clear, easy-to-understand language. Documents can simply be photographed and are translated into plain language within seconds.
“Many people leave a doctor’s appointment or medical examination feeling confused about their results. Consultations are often brief and the wait for the next appointment can be long. In that uncertainty, we want to offer support,” explains Karen Hentschel, founder of Simply Onno. “With our service, we help people better understand their health information and make more informed decisions about their care.”
The interdisciplinary team behind Simply Onno includes designers Karen Hentschel, Stephan Thiel and Marc Tiedemann, as well as neurosurgeon PD Dr med Witold Polanski. Alongside the use of artificial intelligence, the team places great importance on its responsibility towards users and acts with a strong awareness of their needs.
That is why the word “Simply” in the name also reflects their commitment to usability and data protection. Simply Onno does not require user accounts, stores no personal data, and processes uploaded information only in anonymised form.
The service is currently available at www.simply-onno.com for German-speaking users. An English version is already in development to make health information easier to understand for even more people.
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Backgrounder & Factsheet
About Simply Onno GmbH
Simply Onno GmbH is a Berlin-based AI startup founded as a GmbH in 2024 with the aim of making medical knowledge more accessible. The team collaborates remotely from Berlin, Munich, and Dresden. The company is entirely self-funded and independent of investors. Long-term financing is planned through the introduction of additional paid features.
About the Service
Simply Onno is a web-based service that allows users to upload medical documents easily or capture them directly via photo. Without requiring an app, the service provides a fast, clear, and easy-to-understand translation and summary of the content.
To achieve this, Simply Onno uses state-of-the-art AI language models capable of recognising, analysing, generating, and validating text. In addition, close oversight by our medical expert team ensures the highest level of quality and accuracy in the results.
Simply Onno is currently available free of charge and funded through donations. In the future, paid add-on services will be introduced to ensure sustainable long-term financing.
About the Founders
Karen Hentschel previously worked as Design Director at the renowned design agency IDEO, where she was responsible for building the Interaction Design team and advancing design excellence across Europe. She brings extensive experience in design leadership, stakeholder management, design operations, and the development of user-centred solutions. At Simply Onno, she is responsible for strategic direction, design, and external communications, among other areas.
Marc Dantas Tiedemann is a serial entrepreneur with a long-standing track record in the digital health sector. As Co-Founder and CPO of Heartbeat Medical, he scaled the company from 3 to 50 employees and established a software solution for documenting patient outcomes in more than 250 hospitals across the DACH region. At Simply Onno, he leads operations and oversees product management.
Stephan Thiel contributes his technical expertise as Managing Partner at Studio NAND, where he developed data-driven software solutions for companies including Google and Volkswagen. At Simply Onno, he is responsible for technical implementation and orchestrates the server infrastructure.
Dr. Witold Polanski is a neurosurgeon at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus in Dresden, specialising in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery as well as artificial intelligence in medicine. With his extensive experience in quality management, he ensures medical quality at Simply Onno.
Fact Collection:
Company founded as a GmbH in September 2024
4 employees / founders
Fully self-funded
Soft launch January 2025
Already hundreds of documents successfully translated
10% of our users leave positive feedback
Selected User Comments:
“Very clearly explained, my GP could not put it into such simple words.” – Unknown User
“I now understand things that were not clear to me before.” – Benjamin, 25 years
“The translation sounds less alarming than the report itself.” – Marte, 43 years
“As a layperson, I could not make sense of this report at all. Very good, thank you. It really helps me prepare for my doctor’s appointment.” – Britta, 61 years
Sources of the Cited Studies in the Press Release
Understanding of their Diagnosis and Treatment Plans During Discharge in Emergency Ward in a Tertiary Care Centre: A Qualitative Study. JNMA J Nepal Med Assoc. 2019 Sep-Oct;57(219):357-360. doi: 10.31729/jnma.4639.
Schaeffer, D., Berens, E.-M., Gille, S., Griese, L., Klinger, J., de Sombre, S., Vogt, D., Hurrelmann, K. (2021). Health Literacy of the Population in Germany – Before and During the Corona Pandemic: Results of HLS-GER 2. Bielefeld: Interdisciplinary Center for Health Literacy Research (IZGK), Bielefeld University. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4119/unibi/2950305