Visualising medical informaiton for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer
This is the project I was currently working on (October.2019- present). In these days, we are under the shortage of healthcare worker, according to Macmillan Cancer Support (2020) said: "not all the patients had fully explanation for the treatments and side-effects". And most of the existing projects were text-only. However, our brains were not that good at processing text than images. In this project, I tried to transfer the medical information in the visual language and offer the audiences another way to access that information.
About this project
My MFA project is about visualising medical information about non-small cell lung cancer. The purpose of this project is hoping it could help the communication between patients and healthcare worker. According to Macmillan Cancer Support, not all the cancer patients receive the full explanation before they take the treatment. I wish this work could offer another option for patients and their families on understanding medical information. When I was six, I lost my grandfather because of cancer. In that time, it is difficult for me to understand what is going on. I think that is one of the reasons why I am interested in visualising scientific information and hoping could use my skills in helping other people in need. I notice the most of exiting projects which are published by cancer foundations or healthcare system in multiple countries are text-only. I think this is an opportunity for me to use my skills in doing something different for the issue I care about.
The two main purposes of this work, there were offering another option for patients in understanding the medical information and increase the level of communication between doctors and patients. Since October. 2019 until now (February 2020), I explored four different versions on this topic. In the beginning, I tried to use less text and wish it could cross the boundaries of languages. But it was not successful delivering the information as I wish. It could not achieve the purpose I set. I moved to search on the graphic story, However, storytelling might cause some misunderstanding and more pages on delivering the whole message. I also tried the story book. BUT! What was the most important thing for the communication? My answer for now was easier, clearer, and directly telling audiences the information. In the end, I redesign the illustrations style on my project, using simple shape as characters for three types of cells, including healthy cell, mutant cell and cancer cell.
The illustrations
The illustrations in here were the one I used to present to the foundation before December. It was not the illustration in my final work, because this was an ongoing project. I will update the final one in the future.