Media – House of Fertility

Animation in the Healthcare Industry

Animation is providing value to the healthcare field in a variety of ways, with many medical professionals realizing the benefits that medical animation can bring in the areas of education, marketing and patient communication.

Ease of access to improving technology has increased the prevalence of medically animated videos, making it easier and more cost-effective to use high-quality animations to explain complex healthcare topics.

Here are some uses benefiting the industry.

Communicating with Patients

Animations can be used to share information with patients in a variety of ways. Many patients start their search for medical help online. Medical institutions can use animations on their websites to help prospective patients understand medical conditions, medicines and procedures. Given that most patients do not have an extensive medical background, animations can help patients feel better prepared even prior to their first appointment. This lets them feel more confident, and gives them a better understanding of complicated processes.

Animated videos can even be displayed in waiting rooms, with or without sound.

While not replacing face-to-face communication, animations can supplement and assist with the explanation of conditions, procedures or programs.

As many of us are visual learners, presenting information in a visual format promotes better understanding and retention of information. This is especially useful when it comes to complex topics such as medical issues.

Visuals provide patients a reference point should they not be able to remember the overwhelming information explained to them during a consultation. Animation adds the additional capability of movement which allows you to slow down, speed up and adjust as needed.

In addition, animation has benefits over video. One is not constrained by difficult shooting conditions or limited in any way. For example, you can zoom to the molecular level, deconstruct a procedure to show how it works from the inside or create any hypothetical scenario.

Furthermore animation allows patients to feel more comfortable as they can be shown what they need to see to understand processes without having to see footage of a real medical procedure.

Education

Medical animations can be effective tools for educating medical professionals at all levels as well as for training new employees.

It can improve training and speed up the onboarding of new hires at medical facilities. Since animation lends itself to e-learning, new hires can conduct their training anytime and anywhere.

Resources can be made available by employers to all staff for review at any time.

Marketing

Marketing in the medical field comes with unique challenges:

The information may be detailed and technical, making it difficult to hold the attention of the audience.
Patients and investors usually do not have technical knowledge or an in-depth medical background.
Doctors and other medical professionals have limited time, meaning presentations must be concise.

Animation can alleviate all of these challenges.

Marketing to Patients

Visually presented information takes less effort to absorb. Accordingly medical and pharmaceutical companies often use animation when marketing to patients directly.

The average consumer often associates these companies with animated characters from commercials for medications. Medical facilities are now increasingly using animated mascots to promote treatments and improve brand recognition and association. They are also leveraging more complex animations to show how medication is administered or to explain medical procedures and processes.

These animated videos are available on their websites for consumers or potential patients to view this media at any time. They may also choose to share high-quality animated videos on social media or with friends if they feel it gave them valuable information.

Marketing to Medical Professionals

In the case of marketing to medical professionals, the audience has a medical background and will understand the technical aspects. However companies need their presentations to be succinct while sufficiently informative.
Animations allow you to condense a lot of information into a relatively short animation, making them an excellent medium for this scenario.
In addition these do not have to be presented to medical professionals in-person but can be sent via email and followed up with a phone call after the doctor has viewed the animations. Medical professionals can even do their own research if the company has uploaded their animations on their website.

Benefits of Medical Animation

There are many benefits provided by medical animations:
• Detailed Explanation: animations let you to explain complex topics in a short amount of time through detailed visual representations.
• Broadened Scope: animations allow you to show content that is not limited to what the human eye can see or the way we view objects in the real world. For example, you can show the mechanism of action of a drug or show a cross-section of a medical device and rotate that cross-section to show it from different angles. You can zoom down to the microscopic level, pan out to explain broad trends or even create unique animated characters.
• Increased Engagement: it is easier to keep people’s interest with visual content. Animations can be entertaining and engaging because of their dynamic and captivating nature.
• Improved Retention: people remember more through visual media, especially animation. Animation helps promote brand recognition.
• Suitability for Various Audiences: animations are suitable for a wide range of people regardless of medical background. Technical complexity and detail can be adjusted based on the level of expertise of the audience.
• Professionalism: animation can add a professional factor and impress potential clients, investors and other stakeholders.
• SEO: animations often keep users on a website longer. Whereas images or text is often simply scrolled, the animation takes more time to be watched. Google will typically recognize the content as more valuable if users spend more time on a web page. In turn this boosts the website in search results and opens an opportunity to get more traffic.