Award
National Library of Medicine 5R01LM014084-04
Advancing Medical Illustration in Patient Education Materials: from Art to Science
Recipient
Northeastern University, Boston, MA, United States
Award Amount
$371,185.00
Ceiling
$371,185.00
Awarded
May 25, 2026
Identifier
5R01LM014084-04
The award funds a project to analyze medical illustration styles in patient education materials, develop ontologies and corpora, and assess their effects on patient comprehension and anxiety, including studies using virtual reality and conversational agents.
Description
This project aims to study different kinds of medical illustrations used in patient education materials to understand their impact on patient understanding and anxiety. It will develop a domain ontology describing medical illustration styles, create a corpus of patient education documents exhibiting these styles, and evaluate their impact on comprehension and anxiety through a large-scale study involving 8,100 individuals. Additionally, the project will explore the use of Embodied Conversational Agents to explain patient education documents via 2D displays and immersive Virtual Reality in a randomized study with 300 participants.