Informatics medical animation featured in public television series on health

One of the great values of 3D animation, as taught in the Media Arts and Science program, IU School of Informatics, is the ability to make complex issues easier to understand. That’s been the longtime mantra of Albert William, an IUPUI research associate. To that end, a health-related animation project created by William is featured in an important series of broadcasts on public television stations across Indiana.

Mastering Your Health is a new half-hour television program aimed at educating the public on how to take control of their health. An episode about diabetes treatment and prevention includes an animation of views of anatomic structures and cellular processes involved with, and related to, diabetes. William, who teaches 3D stereoscopic animation at the School of Informatics at IUPUI, is the animation’s creator.

"This episode of Mastering Your Health utilizes animation as a tool to help people understand the 'unseen' aspects of the disease," explained William. "We are using these visualizations to help people understand the structures in the body that are at risk for diabetes, and to give a simplified description of how the body creates and processes insulin."

The first two segments, which will air on eight public broadcasting service (PBS) stations in Indiana in April, May, and June, will focus on diabetes and skin health, respectively. Each of the Mastering Your Health segments will include information on nutrition and physical activity. Plans call for contacting the other 49 states, inviting them to participate in this integrated TV/radio programming project.

Content for the Mastering Your Health segments was developed with input from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Ball State University, Butler University, Purdue University, Chef Academy, and Indiana Medical Group. Each episode features a variety of experts including well-known accredited chefs, chiropractors, clinical nutritionists, medical doctors, physical therapists, and psychologists.

“As one of the most widely read scientific journals in the world, Science relies on illustration that is not only fastidiously accurate but beautifully rendered. The staff at Cosmocyte have demonstrated time and again that they deliver on both counts, and often on a tight deadline. We can always count on Cosmocyte to deliver top-notch scientific and medical animation and illustration”

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