Throughout the lifecycle of any medical device, the old cliché “time is money” holds true – and those with the most money available for funding development and bringing a device to market tend to have little in the way of spare time. And once it’s brought to market it could be said that there’s very little time to explain the mode of action of that medical device to overworked individual general practitioners. Although medical marketing companies have an armoury of tools such as leaflets, brochures and white papers available to promote their products, the most powerful, timesaving and economical tool in that armoury would be the 3D medical animation.
Although the brain has more processing capacity for visual input than for all the other senses combined, it’s far too easy for readers’ eyes to glaze over when confronted with pages of static text, interspersed with the occasional diagram.
So what better way could there be of explaining the mode of action of a medical device – no matter how it’s defined1 than with a visually appealing, action-packed, colourful and even entertaining 3D medical animation?
After all, as another old cliché puts it: “a picture is worth a thousand words” – and that’s especially true when it comes to a 3D animation running at 30 individual frames a second. That’s a lot of words, but with an animation it’s easy to find the precise words you’re looking for when you freeze the frame, especially since it’s so easy to add labels in those images and a verbal explanation in the animation soundtrack.
So that’s why medical students, when learning about modes of action of medical devices of all kinds, learn faster and more thoroughly when pausing and replaying medical animations.
And come the day when those students become fully-fledged medical professionals, the time will also come for many of them to refer back to those same 3D medical animations when refreshing their memory regarding surgical procedures and the proper mode of action of the medical devices they’re scheduled to install.
But the day will also come when those professionals will find themselves putting time aside for visits from company representatives, keen to tell them about newer versions of medical devices. Of course it’s possible for those representatives to hand over printed material and explain the intricacies of an upgraded medical device, but time for both seller and buyer is a precious commodity.
In which case, the fastest and most efficient way of describing any advance in a medical device would be to flip open a laptop or tap a tablet and let 3D medical animations – like the one for Levita’s magnetic surgical platform2 – do the talking.
But medical animations aren’t just for professionals: those who stand to benefit from those devices need to understand what’s involved, from installation to mode of action of those medical devices – even if they’re almost too small to be seen by the naked eye3.
In short, it really is quicker and more efficient to show anybody how something works than to tell them4.
So from inception to installation, the same piece of 3D medical animation can inform and educate different audiences about the mode of action of medical devices of all shapes and sizes, saving time, money … and ultimately, lives.
References:
1 – Defining a medical device: http://www.who.int/medical_devices/publications/en/MD_Regulations.pdf
2 – Levita’s magnetic surgical platform: http://levita.com/
3 – Nanotechnology images: http://medicalfuturist.com/getting-smaller-and-smarter-nanotechnology-in-healthcare/
4 – Faster to show than to tell: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999530/
