When neurologist Jasper Mecklenburg co-founded dotbase, he wasn’t chasing a trend—he was solving a problem he knew firsthand from years on the hospital floor.

At Berlin’s Charité, Jasper saw how doctors spent half their time wrestling with siloed data, duplicating paperwork, and navigating outdated software. His conviction: medicine needed a new context layer—a platform that could unify data, workflows, and expertise, so doctors could focus on their patients, not just their admin.

In this conversation, Jasper shares dotbase’s journey from a research project at Charité to a venture-backed startup. He shares the most challenging technical issues in health tech, why simplicity is key to adoption, and how dotbase is positioning itself as the bridge between human specialists and AI in medicine.

About Jasper Mecklenburg

Jasper Mecklenburg is a physician-turned-founder based in Berlin. Trained in neurology at Charité, he worked on brain-computer interfaces and deep brain stimulation before co-founding dotbase. His career shift from clinical care to healthtech entrepreneurship reflects his drive to transform how doctors and patients interact with medical data.

About dotbase

Co-founded by Jasper Mecklenburg (CEO) and Andrea Kreichgauer (CTO), dotbase is a Berlin-based health tech startup that builds a context engine for hospitals. By integrating patient data, medical expertise, and hospital workflows, dotbase creates a workspace where doctors and AI can collaborate effectively. The company spun out of Charité in 2024 and is now scaling across Germany with the support of investors.

“Over 40% of a doctor’s work is still admin and documentation. We need to give them that time back to focus on outcomes.”

From Neurology to Entrepreneurship

Before becoming a founder, Jasper was a neurologist at Charité in Berlin, working on deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s patients. “I loved the clinical side,” he says, “but every day I saw the same bottleneck: data scattered across silos, doctors improvising with Excel sheets, and critical information trapped in someone’s head instead of in a system.”

The frustration gave rise to a vision. What if medicine had a context layer—a platform where patient history, medical expertise, and hospital processes could finally come together? That was the seed of dotbase.

“In medicine, the training stays in your head, but machines can remember better,” Jasper explains. “We wanted to design software that integrates seamlessly into workflows rather than disrupts them.”

“We’re flipping the model. Instead of software dictating workflows, specialists build the workflows they actually need.”

What does dotbase do?

dotbase provides a system of action that connects hospital data systems with the daily work of medical specialists. Instead of replacing existing hospital information systems, it acts as the missing layer in between—turning raw data into clinical decision-making.

Their first focus is high-complexity areas: neurology, oncology, and psychiatry. These specialties demand precision and are rich with data, but are underserved by outdated software.

The platform gives hospitals data governance and flexibility, while doctors see only a clean, simple interface. “It feels like it works the way you need it to, not the way IT decided it needed to work five years ago,” Jasper says.

The funding journey

dotbase spun out of a project that Jasper led at Charité, Europe’s largest university hospital. Early contracts gave them revenue and credibility from day one, but scaling meant stepping beyond hospital procurement cycles.

In early 2024, Jasper and his co-founder, CTO Andrea, raised a pre-seed round from angel investors and micro-VCs. “We needed operator experience around us,” Jasper says, “because while we knew the hospital world, we were first-time founders.”

That’s when Robin Capital came in. “You are very people-first, Robin. You understood our vision, but more importantly, you spent time understanding us as founders,” Jasper says. “As an investor, you’re fast, pragmatic, and know when to lean in or step back. That’s rare.”

Now, dotbase is preparing for a seed round this autumn to expand across German hospitals, build technical depth, and lay the groundwork for European expansion.

“In five years, we don’t expect to be the only system—but we do expect to be the standard in quite a few specialties.”

Tackling technical complexity 

Medicine’s biggest technical challenge isn’t the lack of data—it’s the lack of semantic interoperability. “It’s not just about moving data between systems. It’s about every system understanding data in exactly the same way,” Jasper explains.

For example, two hospitals may both record “body weight.” One measures it in kilograms, while another measures it in pounds; one records it manually, while another records it from a patient app. Without context, the data can’t be trusted.

dotbase solves this by building a no-code data object model that allows local flexibility while enforcing standards underneath. “It’s like letting cardiologists create their own Lego pieces while ensuring those pieces fit into the bigger set,” says Jasper.

This is complex, painstaking work, but essential. “Everyone talks about agentic AI in healthcare, but if the underlying data isn’t contextualized, agentic AI is useless.”

The human side

Despite its complexity, dotbase has a human-centered philosophy:

• For doctors: interfaces must be intuitive, not overwhelming. “Doctors want control, but they also need simplicity. We design so they get both.”
  
  

• For patients: their outcomes matter most. The platform ensures the right information reaches the right clinician at the right time.
  
  

• For hospitals: dotbase offers independence, letting them own their data while still innovating.

For Jasper, the shift from physician to founder felt natural. “As a doctor, you impact one patient at a time. As a founder, you can impact the whole system. It’s less immediate, but the leverage is enormous.”

Looking ahead

Jasper has been fascinated by brain-computer interfaces since he was twelve, after reading about monkeys controlling mouse cursors with a brain implant. dotbase, he argues, is an extension of that obsession: “It’s about how humans and machines can communicate to make each other better.”

Today, AI in healthcare is primarily used to automate administrative tasks, such as scribing, note-taking, or billing. But dotbase wants to go further: combining AI with structured clinical data to augment specialists. “That’s when AI moves from paperwork to real medical work.”

In five years, Jasper envisions dotbase as the standard context layer in key specialties, enabling hospitals to collaborate with AI safely and effectively.

Quickfire Round

Tool you can’t live without: 

Notion – “It’s our shared brain.”

Founder/Startup you admire: 

Tobi Lütke, Shopify – “Everyone can become a developer through systems.”

Recharge ritual: 

Sailing and running.

Advice that stuck:

Build for Monday morning, 8 a.m. If your tool doesn’t change someone’s work, then you’re not building the right thing.

dotbase is hiring. If you’re a technical builder excited by healthcare data, interoperability, and context engineering, they want to hear from you. Check out their careers page and share it with anyone who would be a good fit.