New Perspectives from the AMI 2014 Annual Conference

Samantha Reba
Copywriter

The 2014 Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) annual conference was held July 23-26 at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, and included keynote speaker sessions, workshops, a salon, a tour of the Mayo Clinic, and noteworthy networking opportunities. 

The AMI conference is a great opportunity for medical illustrators from all over the country to come together to hear lectures from esteemed professionals in the field and take classes that enhance their understanding of the latest techniques and digital programs.

The keynote speakers included sculptor and anatomy instructor Andrew Cawrse, Daniel H. Garrison, PhD, and medical artist Sarah Hegmann, MS, and Francine Mary Netter, MA, MBA, among dozens of others. 

Two of our esteemed medical illustrator/animators also attended the conference and workshops so they could expand their expertise in the technologies we use to meet our clients’ strategic needs. 

Jamie Rippke sat in on the session “High-Quality 3D Models from Medical Image Date-Osirix to ZBrush^® and Beyond,” which focused on ZBrush, a program that medical illustrators and animators at Artcraft Health work with daily. The workshop led attendees on a step-by-step process in creating high-quality surface models derived from medical imaging data, including MRIs and CT scans.

In his keynote session, Andrew Cawrse, whose works have been featured in Avatar, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Van Helsing, Dreamcatcher, and Star Wars Episode I and II, demonstrated the magnetic models he created through the use of ZBrush. 

“Surgical Treatment of Craniosynostosis” was a stand-out speaker session led by Nicholas M. Wetjen, MD, pediatric neurosurgeon and associate professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics as the Mayo Clinic. This session highlighted a new procedure for correcting craniosynostosis, a birth defect that causes babies’ heads to become misshapen, thereby preventing the brain from growing properly. Dr Wetjen led the audience through the procedure that the Mayo Clinic perfected to reconstruct the shape of the skull to facilitate normal brain growth.

For next year’s conference, Jamie hopes to attend more technique demonstrations and workshops for programs such as CINEMA 4D, ZBrush, Photoshop, and others. Both she and medical illustrator and 3D animator Brandon Keehner found these workshops extremely helpful, since they focus on the tools that Artcraft Health depends on every day to serve our clients. The AMI conference was a great opportunity for Jamie and Brandon to represent Artcraft Health and network with experts in the industry. “It’s reenergizing and allows us to think ‘outside the box’ on future assignments,” Jamie said. 

Brandon believes that the conference gets better every year, and this year was no exception. With the technology available for medical illustrators and animators being enhanced every day, the experience and knowledge gained at the AMI conference can be brought back to Artcraft Health and used to deliver unique solutions to clients, he said.

The conference offered our medical illustrators/animators a new perspective on how they can educate patients and aim to “Engage and Inspire.”

Health Literacy for All

Lisa Calderwood, MA
Senior Medical Writer

I was using the term “adenopathy” for a newsletter I was writing for a clinical trial and went online to Merriam-Webster for a quick check of spelling and pronunciation. (Adenopathy, by the way, is an enlargement of glandular tissue, such as lymph nodes.) On the website, there is an invitation from the editors for users to submit a comment about why they wanted to look up the word they entered. I did a quick scan of the top 10 responses and calculated that 80% of people looking up the term adenopathy went to the online dictionary because they saw the term in their doctor’s summary or in a report for a CT or MRI scan and had no idea what it meant.

Whether patients are too embarrassed to ask their doctor questions or to simply say they don’t understand written instructions, or whether doctors are too busy to engage in a helpful conversation or don’t have the right educational tools, there is too often a significant gap in the amount and quality of health information provided to patients or caregivers.

There can be serious health ramifications when directions are unclear or culturally insensitive. According to an anecdote shared in an article in American Medical News (Health literacy: help your patients understand directions), a Spanish-speaking patient, when given the instructions to take his blood pressure medicine once a day, misinterpreted the word “once” to mean “eleven,” which is what “once” means in Spanish. Needless to say, he was hospitalized after taking 11 doses each of his diuretic and beta blocker. While that may be an extreme example, it’s not an unlikely scenario.

So it’s not uncommon for patients to turn to online resources to interpret medical terms and learn about their conditions, such as those patients researching adenopathy. In fact, 72% of internet users say they look online for health information. As long as consumers or patients select reliable online resources, or ask their doctor to steer them to the best websites, the Internet can be a valuable place to find answers to health and medical questions. (See Tracking Trends in Healthcare: Looking for Accuracy: Helping Patients Navigate Online Health Resources) 

Still, when patients rely primarily on Web-based health information, a few questions emerge: 

• Are healthcare practitioners (HCPs) remiss in providing ample education to patients about diseases, chronic conditions, test results, or related therapies?
• Is the information they provide beyond the scope of understanding of most patients? 
• What kinds of resources would help HCPs do a better job at teaching patients and, in turn, help them be better managers of their health?

The most effective solutions to these questions are grounded in health literacy best practices, such as the guiding CARE™ principles developed by Artcraft Health. Patient education—whether digital or print—that is clear, actionable, relevant, and engaging promotes adherence, compliance, and greater success in preventative healthcare. Every kind of health communications can be enhanced when these principles are kept top-of-mind. In a patient-centric healthcare system, it’s time for health literacy to be the right of all patients.