I was having a drink with a medical illustrator colleague, the gin and tonic must have been on the strong side because our conversation turned to work…(don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, artists are inherently boring people) Anyway, we started to discuss the effectiveness of medical illustration and animation in health communication. An hour later, we left the bar no wiser. On the way home I thought that this was a topic that should be explored further, so I did a little research. In these next series of blog posts I will be explaining what I found and how this information can be used to create better, more effective medical media.
Let me start off by saying that the communication of health information through visual mediums has become essential to communicate the marvels of the medical world. This is because I believe that medical illustrations and animations positively affect learning retention for its viewers. Visuals make the communication of information to audiences easier and broaden the number of people who are able to process this info. However, there is still a lot of research to be done before universally communicable media can be created. Studying target audience and effective teaching methods, two subjects that I will go into in future blog posts, will help to increase successful communication and data recollection between health informants and recipients.
…So grab a drink and please join me in this conversation.
