Honors biomedical engineering students Shivani Koundinya, Ryan Rouse and Cade Kilambi have been working on a passion project that isn’t tied to a class or their undergraduate theses but is instead driven by a desire for community impact. The project, called Art Medic, is a website that can be used by staff and medical personnel at health clinics and other facilities. The website will feature a database full of images to illustrate medical procedures and instructions that can then be shared on a tablet or other screen during medical visits or printed to send home with patients. The hope is that it will improve health outcomes for others who may face language or cultural barriers to accessing healthcare.
How did you come up with the idea for Art Medic?
Shivani: The reason I went into medicine is because I grew up acting as a translator for my parents, especially my mom. As a pre-med student I’ve also seen products similar to Art Medic at hospitals and through Alpha Epislon Delta, the pre-med organization where I’m currently serving as president.
The idea is: medical staff can use a database to find relevant images to share with their patients tailored to their visit or the procedures being performed.
With connections from the McMillon Innovation Studio, we contacted Community Clinic for advice on next steps. They advised us to start with a collection of resources and then once we’ve established a robust database of images, we can start translating the text into multiple languages like Marshallese or Spanish, or even Farsi to better serve refugees.
Ryan: I think one of the main goals was to kind of provide a bridge during patient-doctor interaction when there’s a language or cultural barrier. We hope the illustrations on the website will provide clear information about what patients can expect during their visits. Our goal is to support individuals transitioning into the American healthcare system, including those who may have never accessed healthcare in their home countries.
Cade: Shivani came up with the idea of building it as a website and creating a database, so doctors can access the database directly find what they need, and then print it or download materials for their patients
How do you manage the design process involved in creating illustrations?
An example of an illustration created by a volunteer that communicates the purpose and use of a glucose monitor.
Shivani: We have enlisted student volunteers who are interested in the medical industry and graphic design, to help create the illustrations. The illustrations cover topics such as taking medications, understanding the symptoms of illnesses, operating medical devices or providing overviews of procedures patients may undergo.
To find our first batch of volunteers I contacted Jonathan Langley, director of graduate and professional school planning at the Honors College, who sent out an interest form to pre-med students. We’re now in the process of recruiting additional graphic design students who are interested in helping. (If you’re interested in volunteering, click here!)
How long do you think it will take for the website to be online and ready for feedback?
Shivani: Currently, our volunteers are creating illustrations. We expect to continue to work on the project as we attend medical school.Ryan: We have somewhere around ten illustrations completed, and we have continued to receive ideas from Community Clinic. Originally, they sent us five or six ideas for basic procedures and equipment, and we have four or five volunteers at this time.
Shivani: We give the volunteers a month to complete the illustrations or ask for feedback, and then we assess. We’re hoping by the end of this semester we’ll have more students interested in helping and a full bank of images to present to medical practices next summer. We’ll also share it with people who have had experience that’s valuable. For example, when my parents came to the U.S. they had a low health literacy, so they can provide feedback as well.
What’s your vision for long-term sustainability of a project like this?
A completed illustration that would be used to introduce patients to an MRI machine.
Shivani: At this time, we are intending for Art Medic to be a nonprofit organization. One of the similar tools I’ve seen is a piece of software that hospitals and clinics must pay to implement, but I don’t think that should be necessary. One of the people I spoke to about the idea recommended that we should start off by building a database and do some customer discovery, then set up a foundation for the project before we officially seek nonprofit status, so that’s the plan at this point.
Once you have the website built, what’s next??
Shivani: We’ll share it with Community Clinic and Canopy Northwest Arkansas, then we would like to present it to Washington Regional Medical Center. I know Mercy
Health and Washington Regional have images that are used for physical therapy, so I think they will understand the concept and see its value.
Ryan: We would also like to connect with school nurses at Ramey Junior High, which has a very diverse student population and many languages spoken. We hope to reach local families to let them know that there is a database that can help them as they’re transitioning to the healthcare available here.