Personal injury litigation, including medical malpractice claims, hinge on intricate medical details and evidence. For this evidence to be clearly understood by all participants, medical animation companies translate these intricacies into concise visuals that communicate effectively, and efficiently, catering to the wider litigation audience who lack a medical background.
Complex case theories, anatomical concepts, surgical procedures, and trauma issues must be effectively communicated to the jury, judge and even opposing counsel. Simply, medical animation services help lawyers secure fair outcomes at trial.
The Power of Medical Animations in Legal Proceedings
Courtroom proceedings often involve arguments over in-depth (even tedious) medical evidence, requiring explanation of the particulars to the judge and jury. The foreign nature of medical concepts becomes a hurdle for the court to overcome, putting judgment at risk of being clouded. In malpractice matters, the case may hinge on anatomical or surgical minutia that must be articulated with exacting clarification.
A medical video animation company can provide engaging visual narratives that simplify key facts. Strategic use of dynamically animated demonstratives can be persuasive, while enhancing juror comprehension – and therefore, decision-making.
For example, Artery Studios played a pivotal role in assisting the plaintiff’s legal team in a personal injury case involving significant lower limb trauma. The lawyer presented custom medical animations depicting the pre-operative condition, the surgical steps involved in the orthopedic repair of the fractures, and the resulting hardware that was inserted into the thigh (see Figure 1) and ankle. These custom medical visuals helped the jury understand the trauma repair issues easily and clearly. The plaintiff’s lawyer asserted Artery Studios’ medical-legal visuals had a significant impact on the jury reaching a verdict of $8.2M.
Figure 1: Frames from an animation showing surgical repair of a displaced fracture of the femur in the upper leg.
How Medical Animations Simplify Complex Data for Judges and Juries
The key characteristic of medical animations is their ability to break down sensitive medical evidence into comprehensible visual components. These demonstratives facilitate the following:
1. Visualizing complexity:
Jurors are not familiar with terms like “spinal stenosis of the lateral recess” or “comminuted intra-articular fracture of the calcaneus”. They struggle to follow technical explanations concerning such concepts. Medical animation companies leverage motion-based visuals that incorporate carefully-considered use of color, labels, pacing, titles and graphic elements, to explain trauma, surgical or complications issues.
2. Making the invisible visible:
Medical animations can present case elements that are unseen, such as the mechanism of injury (that a camera isn’t typically recording), surgical concepts (that are seen only by the OR team and rarely videotaped), soft-tissue injury concepts (that radiological imaging can’t yet capture), or slow-motion portrayals (that can be appreciated only with high-speed photography). These movies support expert testimony, allowing audiences to witness the unseen through highly accurate visuals that are based on medical opinion and supporting literature.
3. Adding efficiency:
A concise 60-second animation can synthesize key medical concepts into a summary that encapsulates radiological, surgical and clinical findings, and organize them into one place. The human brain is wired to process visuals more rapidly than spoken words, processing images 60,000 times faster than text. Medical animations can help illustrate a lengthy explanation in succinct steps that will save the court’s valuable time.
4. Optimizing decision-making:
By simplifying medical data, medical animation companies create demonstratives that help jurors grasp issues of causation, or standard of care issues such as missed diagnoses, the physiological response to trauma, etc. This informs decisions, ensuring the delivery of justice.
Why Motion-Media Works: The Science Behind Animations
Research elucidates the impact medical animations have on human cognitive processes. They have been found to influence viewer attention, assisting in greater conceptual understanding, and facilitating cognition (Praveen 2022). The brain processes motion and dynamic visuals more efficiently than text, statistics or theoretical data. Here’s how:
1. How We Process Motion
Humans are born with a trait rooted in survival instincts – we are hardwired to notice movement. Medical animations and other motion media capitalize on this finding to catch the viewer’s attention. Moving onscreen elements, camera pans and fly-arounds, transitions from one view to another, and transparencies that appear through structures, all hold and focus the litigation participants on the critical motion and time-based issues in a case.
2. Learning Through Visuals
Studies and research confirm that visuals used in conjunction with narrative input by a testifying expert help to boost retention by over 60%. A medical animation company creates clear storytelling through carefully designed animations. For detailed comprehension, these contain onscreen labels and titles to explain the concept being portrayed (see Figure 2). This pairing of visuals with text has been identified by Richard Mayer and others as “dual coding”. This approach facilitates comprehension while optimizing retention of key issues throughout the duration of the trial.
Figure 2: Two stills from an animation showing functional complications of the jaw after temporomandibular joint (TMJ) injury.
3. Emotional Connection
Research (Haragi 2020) indicates that litigation participants appreciate realistic portrayals – but without gruesomeness. Medical animations can foster empathy, as the viewer gains a heightened awareness of the matter. Carefully crafted visuals can humanize the plaintiff’s experience, making their issues more relatable.Medical animation companies can create persuasive videos that do not exaggerate the facts, while focusing the viewer’s attention on the key points. When scientific accuracy is incorporated into realistic animations that portray a scenario, the emotional connection may yield better justice.
The Range of Medical Animations Used at Trial
A medical animation company can provide demonstratives to assist in a range of personal injury litigation matters, including:
1. Mechanism of injury animations
- Purpose: Focuses on the injury and explains how it occurred. This can include demonstrating forces acting on the body or other biomechanical considerations of injury, related motion or actions that damage the body’s tissues, temporal-based considerations presented in either slow-motion or time-lapse, etc.
- Example: An animation depicting the details of spinal cord injuryfrom fracture-dislocation trauma resulting from frontal impact forces being applied to the vertebrae.
- Benefit: Assists jurors in understanding damages and liability issues.
- Created by: A medical animation company that ensures biomechanical and anatomical accuracy.
2. Surgical animations
- Purpose: To highlight surgical details for medical practice or other trauma-related matters.
- Example: A detailed animation depicting hip replacement surgery that resulted in lower limb malalignment and mobility complications.
- Benefit: Aids in clear communication of the intricate operation that was performed, including demonstrating standard of care issues.
- Created by: A medical animation services company with expertise in creating visuals that demonstrate surgical details with exacting precision.
3. Functional mobility animations
- Purpose: To explain the complications a patient is left with after injury or medical error, including factors of ongoing rehabilitation or the use of mobility aids.
- Example: An animation highlighting gait complications with prosthetic use after lower limb amputation – created by a medical animation company that understands issues of kinesiology, gait, range of motion and other physiatry-related matters.
- Benefit: Helps the audience understand the painful suffering and long-term sequelae of trauma.
- Created by: Medical animation companies who understand issues of kinesiology, gait, range of motion and other physiatry-related matters.
Back your case with animated visuals that speak for themselves!
Medical animations have been pivotal in revolutionizing courtroom proceedings. At Artery Studios, we translate medical science into insight, helping jurors make decisions based on crystal-clear understanding.
By breaking down complexities, we help lawyers strengthen their case. Our medical animation services have proven to promote justice.
Are you a litigator struggling to communicate complex medical issues? Trust us to strengthen your trial strategy with accurate and engaging animations. We work diligently to ensure that testifying experts can explain intricate concepts with precision and impact. Contact us to discuss how medical animations will elevate your litigation approach.