Healthcare Infographics: The Whole Picture

Infographics have been used throughout history to educate, captivate and inspire action — but, how useful are they in today’s world of healthcare response marketing? We hit the streets to uncover the truth, and what we found out left us speechless. To view the infographics used in this podcast, click the links below. Heart Disease a Global Epidemic Heart Disease in US: Men vs Women Heart Disease Prevention   The 19: Healthcare – Episode 8 Healthcare Infographics: The Whole Picture Recorded Intro: This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less, game-changing Insights in Healthcare from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Host Intro: When we think about Florence Nightingale, we typically envision a humble nurse at a soldier’s bedside, selflessly tending to their wounds by candlelight. The Lady with the Lamp is an iconic image and it really created a model that nurses would aspire to for decades to come. However, one thing that tends to get overlooked in Florence Nightingale’s lengthy list of accomplishments and accolades is that she was a true pioneer in the world of healthcare infographics. I mean, she practically invented them! Allow me to set the stage. It’s 1856, the Crimean War is coming to an end, and hospitals are overflowing with wounded soldiers. As a nurse, Florence is constantly confronted with the pain and suffering of war – she sees scores of gravely injured people on a daily basis and, over time, she starts to notice a pattern – these men aren’t just dying from wounds inflicted on the battlefield, they’re dying from disease. Now, the prevalence of illness during wartime wasn’t well understood back then, and, Florence, being the curious person she was, started to investigate this phenomenon. She counted numbers that others preferred to ignore and, when it came time to present her findings to policy makers, she was armed with an arsenal of eye-catching, black and red infographics that clearly conveyed one major point: that more Crimean War soldiers died from disease than combat. Her now-famous Rose Diagram has served as the inspiration behind countless other infographics used for similar purposes – to make change, save lives and inspire a little rebellion every now and again. Pictures are evocative, they’re emotional, they make us feel and that makes them memorable. Florence Nightingale could have pointed out flaws in the public health system with a 50-page research paper, but she chose to use infographics instead. And there’s a reason for that. Images capture our attention at an intrinsic level. Colors, themes, and imagery inspire feelings that leave a lasting impression. They clearly communicate, and they get remembered – and that makes them an incredibly important marketing asset. And this brings us to our own research project – a marketing expedition, if you will. To determine healthcare infographic design best practices, we decided to present a focus group with three very distinct designs. This group consisted of men and women in their early 20s and mid-60s. And we asked them all a series of questions to determine what types of infographics were the most eye-catching and the most effective in communicating a message. The results…left us a little speechless, to be honest. Here’s what happened. As always, these interviews have taken place in a variety of locations, in-person and via Skype,