Advancing Medical Illustration to Help Patients Understand Health Information
Official title: Advancing Medical Illustration in Patient Education Materials: from Art to Science
Funded at Northeastern University · NIH-11332861 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This grant tests how different medical illustration styles affect adults' understanding and anxiety when learning about health topics, using public-domain materials and new conversational AI tools.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Northeastern University NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Boston, United States) |
| Project start | September 1, 2023 |
| Project end | May 31, 2027 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $371,185 |
| NIH project number | 5R01LM014084-04 |
| Project ID | NIH-11332861 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Adults 21 and older who will participate in web-based or VR studies evaluating education materials and explanations.
✕Less likely to help
If you are not using or viewing medical illustrations as part of a study or if you are not comfortable with digital or VR tools, you may not benefit.
What this research studies
If funded, researchers will build a domain ontology of medical illustration styles, create a public corpus of patient education materials, and test how visuals influence understanding and worry in thousands of adults. They will also examine embodied conversational agents that explain materials in both 2D displays and immersive VR, through a randomized study. The project aims to make patient education clearer and less stressful by matching visuals to what patients need to know. Access to the corpus and findings could help clinicians choose better visuals and improve patient communication.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: Better patient understanding and reduced anxiety from medical information through optimized illustrations and new explanation tools.
How similar studies have gone: Previous work suggests that visuals influence comprehension and anxiety, but this project expands to a large, diverse sample and novel embodied agents.
Where this research is happening
-
Northeastern University
Boston, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Bickmore, Timothy W. — Northeastern University
- Study coordinator: Bickmore, Timothy W.
Related research
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.