The Growth of Patient-Friendly Animations
A key ACR PFCC program has come a long way since its launch in 2022 — now with over 40 new videos in multiple languages.
Bringing patients peace of mind is an important part of providing the best possible care. Some imaging procedures may seem intimidating to patients who don’t fully understand what is occurring and why they are so important. In October 2022, the ACR Commission on Patient- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) Patient Engagement Committee launched a new series of animated short videos to help patients understand the appropriate use of imaging procedures. Source content for the videos comes from the ACR Appropriateness Criteria® (AC) patient-friendly summaries, which are authored by patients. “The summaries are an important resource, but we needed to do more to get this information out in front of patients,” says Nina S. Vincoff, MD, co-chair of the Patient Engagement Committee. “Not all patients are going to want to read a 250-word document.”
Growing the Program
The Patient-Friendly Animation program is touted by the PFCC Commission as one of a kind. “There’s a lot of information out there about imaging tests, but most of it would fall under the category of what I would call ‘what to expect,’” Vincoff says. “There isn’t much information available about how to partner with your doctor and choose which test to have. You can’t have shared decision making unless you provide patients with information in a way that they can understand what the options are. What we’re doing here is a little different from answering the question ‘What would it be like to have a CAT scan?’ Instead, we’re answering questions like ‘Why did my doctor choose an MRI instead of a CAT scan?’ I think we’re doing something unique in that space.”
Taking the AC and shortening them is no easy task, as it takes a team effort to convert pages of text into a brief script. “We take the AC and use radiologists from the PFCC Patient Engagement Subcommittee — along with a layperson author — to produce these summaries,” says Sonya Bhole, MD, co-chair of the Patient Engagement Committee. “It’s difficult because it’s so much information that we get into these short paragraphs. Then it’s even harder because we take these short paragraphs, and we turn them into a script for an animation.” Through team effort, Bhole says, the Patient Engagement Committee has been successful with this part of the production process.
You can’t have shared decision making unless you provide patients with information in a way that they can understand what the options are.
Getting the Word Out
Bringing the videos to as many patients as possible has been another key to the program’s success. Promotional strategy has also been crucial — the Patient Engagement Committee makes sure to promote the videos in conjunction with various awareness months. In addition, the committee has partnered with several organizations and websites to help spread the word, such as the AMA, RadiologyInfo.org and DenseBreast-info.org.
With partner promotion comes data, and websites like RadiologyInfo.org have provided the Patient Engagement Committee with notable metrics. “Not only does RadiologyInfo.org help us with information on what the patients are searching for, but they’ll post our videos on the specific topic page,” says Ted Reuss, ACR PFCC senior program manager. “They would tell me about Spanish versions of material that they’ve worked on, and some of their most viewed pages on these topics are the Spanish-language pages. We worked with the RadiologyInfo.org vendor who does Spanish medical translations and started off doing a few translations of our videos, and they were quite popular. I think our most viewed animation from 2024 was a Spanish-language version.”
According to Reuss, artificial intelligence (AI) has helped the Patient Engagement Committee change how the animations are getting produced, allowing for easier production and editing to ensure they get released in a timely manner. AI voiceovers have been particularly helpful in helping the committee produce content. “I was able to find an online AI voice generator,” Reuss says. “With some of the programs, you can’t even tell it’s AI, and it’s very affordable. Then if we wanted to, for instance, do a set of translations to additional languages, we wouldn’t have to go and find a voice actor. It makes editing and tweaking audio so much easier.”
Growing the Program Through Feedback
When the Bulletin reported on the PFCC animation program in 2023, it was still in its infancy. But the program has since evolved, producing 40 new videos that have almost 60,000 total views and 388 hours of view time. These numbers are a significant jump from 2023, with the videos totaling 51,677 more views and 307 more hours of view time. However, the Patient Engagement Committee is looking at ways to grow the program even more.
“I would love to see the animations incorporated into the electronic health record,” Vincoff says. “You read that your doctor suspects a kidney stone, for example, and you could click on a link to a video to help understand which imaging test is appropriate.” Vincoff would also like to see the animations featured in waiting rooms to help patients understand procedures and feel comfortable.
Reuss adds that physician and patient feedback on the videos (monitored in comments and messages on the YouTube channel) helps the committee grow the program even more than data and metrics. He recalls a time when the late Amanda Crowell Itliong, a dedicated cancer and patient advocate, helped provide input on the ovarian cancer screening video. Itliong, who passed away in 2023, was helping Vincoff and Reuss edit the video script and would say, “If I’m watching this as a patient, here’s what I want to see.” Reuss notes that when they were done with the video, Crowell Itliong said, “This is going to save lives when patients watch this.”
According to Bhole, the driving force for the committee’s work on the program is to advance patient-focused care. “The best thing we can provide for our patients, other than what we’re doing every day in clinic, is getting information out there that’s not only physician and ACR backed but written in a way that all patients can understand,” she says. “We can be an active partner in healthcare.”
By Alexander Utano, associate editor, ACR Press
Webinar: ACR Patient-Friendly Animations — Empowering Patients in Radiology
Many patients are unfamiliar with medical procedures such as imaging tests for their clinical condition. The ACR’s Commission Patient- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) is looking to help bridge the gap in understanding with a unique initiative. Presented by The Beryl Institute, a May 29 webinar will explore use cases for ACR’s library of short videos that explain medical procedures in a way that patients can follow. Sonya Bhole, MD, and Nina S. Vincoff, MD, co-chairs of the PFCC Patient Engagement Committee, will describe how these animations are created and dive into strategies to share these free videos with patients.