How Digital Technology Has Changed the Medical Education and Medical Illustration

Image. Photoshop screen of Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy Illustration, Jihye Choi

Nowadays, when we go to the library, we can find a different look from the past, not just full of books, but a lot of computers and E-book reader device. Today’s students open books and write notes, but also they learn by online class videos and do their homework by producing digital content. The development of digital technology has changed the trend of education. Beyond school, people in the world have focused on skills, knowledge, and tools. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear, who are a Professor at Montclair State University and an Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and Mount Saint Vincent University, say that it is the world beyond school with which education is eventually related (Knobel and Lankshear 97).

Besides, according to James Paul Gee, a famous linguist, social interaction outside of school allows people to create enormous amounts of new knowledge (Gee). Digital technology has brought many advantages in terms of education. My article examines the impact of digital technology on education, especially how medical illustrations and medical education have changed. In the past, doctors used texts such as photographs, drawings, books, medical thesis, and diagnosis to educate patients or medical students. Now, with the development of digital technology that includes colorful and realistic illustrations, animations and VR games using 3D modeling technology are emerging as a new topic of medical education.

I interviewed two professors, Professor Craig Foster and Professor John Dyer, of my major Medical Illustration program, to investigate the changes that digital technologies have made in medical education. I have cited some of the interviews to illustrate the use of digital technology in medical education. In the interview with Foster, a medical illustrator, and animator who has worked in this field for decades, he says that the digital revolution has opened the world to full-color illustrations, animation, and interactivity. He says that information is delivered rapidly via the web to consumers of medical information instead of requiring them to seek information from textbooks and patient guides. As Foster says, the digital revolution brings the advantages of color, animation, and interactivity. As a result, the range of medical illustrations has been expanded and goes beyond hand paintings using traditional materials such as pen, ink, watercolors, or graphite. This expansion of medical illustration has led to efficiency in medical education in many ways.

New medical educational material, such as 3D animation is now used as online teaching materials for medical students. It helps patients who do not understand difficult medical terms to better understand accurate knowledge. This allows us to quickly get medical information from the web without having to browse textbooks. And as VR technology, which has been developing for many years, has been applied to medical education, it has begun to provide new experiences. Surgery simulations and virtual reality games make it easy and fun to learn medical knowledge, even for children. New technologies, such as VR, provide a deeper interaction between humans and computers. This new interaction experience enables people to more actively accept information beyond the text. In this article, I am going to discuss what digital technologies are currently being used in medical education, what medical teaching materials and examples are used, and the new experiences and effects of new medical education.

Digital Technologies in the Medical Education

Medical illustration and medical education are closely linked to each other. As digital technology advances and medical education relies on digital technology, the relationship between medical illustration and medical education becomes more interrelated. In the courses that I am taking at RIT, we use digital technology in medical illustration. Before the development of digital technology, medical illustrations were used to provide pictures in textbooks. However, with computer programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and tablets with the screen, devices with pen and board for digital painting, such as Wacom Cintiq, the technology of 2D drawing has been developed, leading to digital painting. This allows medical illustrators to provide digital painting and graphics. Knobel and Lankshear say that due to the development of technology, traditional media has made a big difference in that they are rendered in pixels on screens rather than on the papers (Knobel and Lankshear 98). Also, 3D technology has further upgraded the range of medical illustrations to create virtual three-dimensional models of patient CT or MRI data. Also, 3D modeling technology using data is widely used in the field of disease treatment research because it can visualize complex molecular structures like macro protein molecules in three dimensions. Sometimes I use 3D protein molecules from the Protein Data Bank(PDB) to make illustrations for research papers. Through these 2D and 3D technologies, medical information is sometimes produced as moving animations.

Examples:

Use of Digital Technology in Medical Illustration

In my final year of the Medical Illustration Program, I have experienced the use of computer technology in a large amount of content and assignments. The textual materials used in textbooks and papers are computer graphics and animations are produced in 2D and 3D technology. When creating illustrations or animations, sometimes a lot of corrections are made, and the use of digital technology can make the modifications time much shorter. With traditional materials, it’s hard to make a lot of changes, and it takes a long time to make a small change. However, illustrations and videos drawn in digital are easy to reproduce and delete, making them quick to create and modify. Reduction in production and modification time allows results to be delivered to patients or doctors faster, so they can get the information they need quickly. I used to draw illustrations with watercolors, carbon dust or color pencils and scan them into digital files in the past. But now, in order to make more efficient use in the medical education industry, I produce illustrations by using digital technology or drawing only a small part of traditional media and then adding digital on top of it.

Digital animation for patient education

Medical illustrations can be used to educate patients who do not have specialized medical knowledge. Because patients are not familiar with medical or scientific terms, they need to learn them related to their condition. Second, patients need to know exactly what their health problems are, and how the problems affect their body. Finally, they need to know how to treat this condition, and how the solution can lead the patients back to normal. These are the key steps in patient training animation. In my interview with Foster, he says that an animation medium is a critical tool for medical illustration today. He explains that adding motion to illustrations or moving around a 3D object can enhance the viewer's understanding of a complex medical or scientific concept.

Bruce Blausen, who is the founder and CEO of the Blausen Medical Company, has the largest number of medical & scientific animation and stock images in the world, say in a news interview with Medgadget as following. According to Blausen, by watching an animation, patients can fully understand their condition. He mentions an anecdote that a woman who saw mitral valve stenosis, one of Blausen’s videos, was filled with tears and thanked after seeing it. The woman said she could not fully understand her condition no matter how much she browsed the internet until she saw the animation. Blausen says that this is why important for people watching animation (Blausen 1). In the absence of digital technology, medical illustrations were less used for patient education and patients could only know their physical condition by relying on a doctor’s description or a written note about the disease. The patients lacked a way to fully understand their state of health. It would not be easy to accept the treatments without a full understanding of the condition and illness. Since the development of digital technology, it is possible to search for medical or scientific terms that patients are not familiar with. By searching digital content on the Internet, patients can look at digital images and animations to see how health problems such as disease can affect their bodies, and how treatments such as medicine can change their health condition.

I interviewed Professor John Dyer, who is actively working as a medical animator in the field. Dyer says doctors can carry digital educational materials in portable devices and show these to patients. He says that even in the early days’ Illustrations helped to make anatomy more accessible to everyone. Although books could be printed and shared easily, Medical professionals could use them to continue learning or for reference. But doctors could use them to show patients what is happening. According to Dyer, A portable device can carry a complete library and also be used to demonstrate operations or procedures to a patient. When doctors explain to patients, they no longer carry that much physical data in papers to explain a large amount of information. And patients can see the moving image and understand the information more easily and accurately. By adding sounds such as narration or dialogue to the visual information shown in the video, it is possible to convey effectively more accurate and specific knowledge. For example, “The Inner Life of the Cell” animation, a collaboration between scientific animation company XVIVO Llc. And Harvard University, shows the invisible cells work in our bodies(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJyUtbn0O5Y). Medical educational animations have expanded the realm of patient education.

VR medical simulations

With the development of 3D technology, a technology called virtual reality has appeared for several years. Virtual reality technology creates a real-like virtual digital world in 3D on the screen. VR enables a virtual reality experience using a head device and a remote controller mainly worn on the head and hands. This technology was initially used primarily for games aimed at entertainment, but it has become wider. One of the many applications of VR technology is medical simulation training. Karen Reynolds, a Director of the Medical Device Partnering Program in South Australia and a Professor at Flinders University, and Greg Ruthenbeck, Ph.D. in VR Surgical Simulation, say that VR technology has brought some advantages to medical education. According to them, first of all, the risk of the patient is reduced. It is also economically helpful because doctors do not have to access to cadavers or animal models needed for the procedure, and they do not use multiple consumables. Finally, a new channel of communication is opened between the medical student and the (Ruthenbeck and Reynolds 16-17). Before using simulation technology, students practiced with books open on one side and using medical instruments directly on patients, cadavers, or animal models. Virtual reality allows them to simulate the desired procedure by setting up several pre-made work environments in a digital device without having to create such a work environment.

In the interview with Dyer, he gives specific examples of how students and residents can study using 3D. He says that learning from 3D models makes even the most difficult exercises in the real world possible in virtual reality. For example, students can look inside the body from various angles and simulate in advance the practice of rebuilding part of the body. This reduces the risk of practicing doctors and patients and creates economic advantages. After students learn in virtual reality, hands-on data is available. The available lab data is a measure of the students’ understanding of the lab. In addition, virtual reality is not constrained by time and space, allowing students to take simulation training wherever they want. Educators can also check and assess their achievements without having to participate in practice. Thus, a new channel of communication occurs between students and teachers online.

Conclusion

The biggest change that digital technology has made in medical education is the transition from papers to digital screens. Living in the age of using digital devices with screens, we learn from electronic devices at home, school or hospital. From the patient’s point of view, they have more access to expertise and can understand difficult medical mechanisms through moving visual references. For healthcare professionals like medical students, surgery simulations save their time, allowing them to learn different medical cases in a wider variety of work environments.

As far as a medical illustrator, I work mostly in a digital workspace. Materials that communicate with clients, such as illustrations and animations, are also digital files, and these materials are delivered via online channels such as email or web drives. This means I don’t have to relocated or access to doctors or companies. It allows for more freedom at work. The same is true not only in the workplace but also in the educational environment. Steven Park, one of my medical student friends, takes medical classes with animation and get graded with an online quiz. He can study at a tie of high concentration without his assigned class time. This time and space freedom makes it possible to use time effectively for learning and working, thus improving academic achievement. We can work and learn outside the hospital or school.

My point is that this new medical education extends the medical educational experience to patients and healthcare professionals by enabling them to better understand medical knowledge and enable new communication beyond the hospital and school. Practices such as medical animation and VR simulation training are the new medical education experiences. It is interesting that technological advances also lead to advances in medical technology, and as new medical technologies continue to emerge, so the high-tech 3D will also continue to evolve. In the future, another new technology beyond VR will bring new changes to medical education.

Works Cited

Blausen, B. "Medgadget: Patient Education through Digital Animation: Interview with Bruce Blausen." Newstex Trade & Industry Blogs; Chatham, 20 Aug. 2014. ProQuest. Accessed 11 Oct. 2019.

Dyer, John. Personal interview. 21 October 2019.

Foster, Craig. Personal interview. 19 October 2019.

Gee, J.P. “What Video Games Like Doom Teach Us About Learning, According to GBL Guru James Paul Gee” EdSurge, 2016, https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-09-06-what-video-games-like-doom-teach-us-about-learning-according-to-gbl-guru-james-paul-gee. Accessed 9 Oct. 2019.

Knobel, M. and Lankshear, C. “Studying New Literacies” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, vol. 58, Issue 2, Oct. 2014, pp. 97-101. Academic Search Elite. Accessed 17 Aug. 2016.

Ruthenbeck, G. S., and Reynolds, K. J. "Virtual Reality for Medical Training: The State-of-the-Art." Journal of Simulation; Abingdon, vol. 9, no. 1, Feb. 2015, pp. 16-26. ProQuest. Accessed 11 Oct. 2019.

XVIVO Scientific Animation. “The Inner Life of the Cell” Youtube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJyUtbn0O5Y. Accessed 1 Nov. 2019.