Medical Animation
Unlike many industries, the medical sector faces strict compliance requirements, a global audience spanning many languages, differing regulatory bodies, and a huge demographic of potential patients, customers and HCPs. That’s why you need to Tell It Better by using medical animation to explain your complex and technical information.
We’ve been helping create medical animations for over a decade.
We help medical device companies, pharmaceutical organisations, healthcare providers and biotech companies Tell It Better by breaking down technical details, showing how things work - especially the hard (or impossible) to film - and creating stories that stick in the minds of your audience. Having spent over a decade making animated medical videos, we know how to take complex healthcare information and make it easy for your audience to understand.
Medical animation services overview
Animation can transform your internal and external medical communications. In a world filled with text and information, you need to communicate in a way that people can understand, and more importantly, remember. By using motion graphics, 2D animation and 3D animation you can take topics that are hard, or impossible, to visualise and create clear communications that lead to real understanding. With a more informed and educated audience, you can change behaviours, influence actions, create better decision making and ultimately better health outcomes.
Animated Medical Marketing
Physicians, HCPs and patients are all short on time. By creating an informative medical animation, you’re acknowledging this limited time and helping to condense and compress key information into a single source of truth. Your marketing and sales assets can be produced with versatility in mind, so they’ll work across multiple languages, channels and platforms. Lastly, by creating an animated medical video, you’re able to keep messaging consistent and compliant to regulatory bodies.
Medical Equipment Training Animation
You want your trainees to be given the same information time and time again, and your trainees actually retain the information. By using animation you can reduce training costs by standardising, you can increase retention by using video and you can show internal mechanisms that can’t be easily demonstrated with live-action video. By using step-by-step training, you can increase trainee knowledge whilst creating a modular training program that can be easily updated in the future.
Healthcare Systems & Process Animations
Onboarding new employees, new systems or new processes can involve a huge amount of information, which traditionally has been documentation. Text-heavy manuals have their place for absolute detail, but most people prefer to learn from video rather than text. By using medical animation to visualise complex workflows, you can help staff understand their role, understand wider systems and reduce inefficiencies.
Medical Procedure Animations
Some topics are sensitive and can be hard to understand or properly explain when using traditional live-action video production. Animation can be used brilliantly to explain more abstract concepts like emotions, or show the inner workings of the human body. By using a medical procedure animation you can explain to your audience exactly what’s going to happen, no matter if that’s a clinician, HCP or a patient.
Animated medical video highlights
We work with names you may recognise, and names you might not. Famous or not, here’s some of our favourite bits recently.
Explaining The Why Behind Tech Tools With Animated Video
Educating & Training About Serious Health Issues Through Animated Video
Why pick us as your medical animation partner?
Over the last decade we’ve helped medical and pharma companies to explain complex, technical information in a simple and clear way. Whether you need to explain to patients, train your colleagues or showcase new innovations to stakeholders, you can Tell It Better with medical animation.
Healthcare Experts
We’ve turned our hands to a complete spectrum of projects over the years. From explaining bluetooth spirometry equipment to highlighting clinical trial outcomes, and most things in between. We know what it takes to communicate internally and externally when dealing with multiple layers of stakeholders, product or scientific experts, marcomms, and regulatory/compliance departments.
Scientific Accuracy
Our process is designed to work collaboratively with frequent check-ins along the way. You can share our work at various stages to seek feedback from subject matter experts. With experience and pedigree in medical animation, we know how much the details matter. Whether you’re showing anatomical structures, cellular processes, or technological equipment, we’ll work with you to showcase it correctly, and simply.
Safe Hands Pair Of Hands
In 2022 we achieved the ISO 9001 certification in quality and project management. It’s probably our main differentiator from other animation companies. It means we have an independently audited process that meets international standards. We know how to run a project in a highly efficient, collaborative and confidential manner. It’s why we’re trusted by some of the biggest medical and pharma companies in the world.
Working Together
We help bridge the gap between science and communication. We work across a range of industries and sectors. This gives us the ability to take technical and complex materials, no matter the subject, and transform them into clear communications. You’re the expert at what you do, and we’re the same. When working together we can create something brilliant, on budget and on time.
Featured sectors
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What our clients say...
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The process:
Get your medical animation exactly when you want it. How? Our ISO 9001 certification. We know how to handle scientific, medical and pharmaceutical projects efficiently. You get the highest quality work, on time and on budget.
1. Brief & Strategy
Like a scientific experiment, it all starts with a hypothesis (or in our world, a brief). You need to know your video will be both accurate and effective. Through our briefing workshop, you'll define exactly what success looks like for you, which healthcare audiences need to see it and what level of detail they require.
2. Production
You see your project develop through clear, manageable steps. Our process is designed to work whether this is your first medical animation or you’re experienced in the world of animated medical videos. Through a series of design tasks we’ll work through a carefully created sequence, taking us from initial idea to final video smoothly.
3. Review & Revisions
Stay in control of the project without it taking over your day. Through weekly presentations, you can give feedback, get input from your stakeholders, and keep the project moving forward towards the all important deadline. We do the work whilst you stay in the loop.
4. Final Delivery
You get exactly the scope of work we defined together at the start. Whether that's different formats for medical conferences, multiple language versions for global clinical teams, or versions tailored for healthcare professionals versus patient education - we deliver everything ready to use.
What exactly is medical animation and how does it differ from regular animation?
Medical animation is a specific subset of animation. Generally, it focuses on an educational outcome like a specific piece of knowledge, rather than storytelling or brand awareness. Medical animation tends to feature scientifically accurate information and uses detailed medical language and terminology. When a medical animation needs to speak to two different audience personas (for example HCPs and patients), you may choose to split the animation into sections that can be filtered or differentiated between the contrasting audiences. This can help keep the scientific detail and accuracy, whilst maintaining accessibility for non-medical audiences. Often medical animations need to meet regulatory requirements that you may not encounter in a more general explainer animation.
How much does a medical animation typically cost?
The cost of a medical animation will depend on its length (or duration), its complexity, and the creative style. You may want to explain your medical device with photorealistic 3D renderings, or you may choose to use a stylised, illustrated approach to your animation. The two different creative treatments will come with two different price tags. Other aspects to consider are how scientifically accurate you’d like your animation to be, how many stakeholders (internal or external) you have, and how urgent the deadline is. A simple 2D medical animation could start at £4,000 with complex, 3D molecular animations starting at £10,000.
For a no obligation proposal, please get in touch with us today. We will prepare a few cost options along with style references and a timeline to show exactly what your project could look like, and how long your project will take. Send us a message, or give us a call so we can get a bit more information about what you’re trying to achieve, and we can get you a ballpark estimate pretty quickly.
How long does it take to create a medical animation?
The simple answer is that there isn't a set time it takes to create a medical animation, or any animation really. It all depends on the complexity of what you're looking to achieve. If you need multiple languages, multiple aspect ratios and durations for different clinical contexts or marketing channels, then that's going to take longer (or a bigger team) than a single video. If your animation needs to pass through medical review, compliance or regulatory checks, then that will add time to the process. If you have a number of clinical experts or internal stakeholders that need to verify anatomical accuracy and approve design work, that will influence the timeline. A simple, stylized animation showing basic anatomical concepts will take less time than a photorealistic, highly detailed 3D animation of complex surgical procedures or cellular interactions.
We typically advise an 8 week turnaround from brief to delivery. This gives you enough time between tasks to get scientific information verified and approved without rushing through. However, we often work on shorter timelines when there is an urgent conference or product launch that needs to be met. In some cases, we've produced simple medical animations for regular clients within a week. If you have a deadline that you absolutely need to meet, drop us an email or give us a call and we'll be able to tell you if we can meet it.
How do you ensure scientific accuracy in medical animations?
We work closely with your team to make sure everything - from the initial script, to the visual style, to the detailed storyboard - is medically accurate and scientifically sound. Each step in our production process is presented to you for review, feedback, and formal approval before we move forward. This approach lets us correctly represent your specific medical subject matter.
During the storyboarding phase, you'll see every frame of the animation sketched out before we develop it into the final high-quality version. This process is particularly valuable for medical review committees and clinical experts who need to verify the accuracy of anatomical structures, procedural techniques, or physiological mechanisms before the animation phase begins.
Can you create animations that work for both healthcare professionals and patients?
One of the main benefits of using animation is the ability to change content for different audiences. We create medical animations that work for both healthcare professionals and patients by developing different sections and scenes that can be made into different versions. Rather than creating entirely separate animations, we adjust the terminology, pacing, and level of detail to suit each audience. For healthcare professionals, we’d have a section with more technical detail and clinical terminology, while for patients, that same section may use simpler explanations that make concepts clear without being overwhelming.
By using visual metaphors and clear storytelling, we can break down what's happening in the body at different levels of complexity. This approach makes medical concepts accessible without oversimplification. We create modular content that can be combined in different ways - for example, a detailed surgical procedure might have one version with technical annotations for surgeons, and another with patient-friendly explanations of what they'll experience. The hard work of creating the detailed procedure can be used twice, giving it a longer shelf life, more relevance to the audience and a great chance of positive ROI for you.
How can medical animations improve our ROI in healthcare marketing?
Animation ROI can be very easy, or very difficult to measure. If you’re looking for a performance gain, and you’re measuring KPI’s, it’ll be easy to assess an improvement in ROI. If it’s more for brand awareness and perception, then they can be harder (but not impossible) to measure.
You can use medical animation to great success at trade shows to help support reps on the stand. You can use them to shorten sales cycles by improving understanding of your medical devices, or creating easier decision-making for healthcare buyers. One of the biggest sources of ROI for medical animations is by repurposing across various marketing channels. Using the same, or similar, animation across sales presentations, exhibitions and conferences, social media and patient education can give you a wide gamut of use for a single project.
Beyond sales metrics, also consider the ROI of time saved, or time gained. If you can reduce time spent repeating standardised messaging around medical devices or equipment, that can be a brilliant return for a business. Instead of training customers manually, you can send an explainer animation to reduce the human requirement and get your sales and support staff onto other tasks.
How do you handle regulatory compliance in medical animations?
We’re not regulatory experts in your area. However, our animation process is designed to help companies just like you to get internal and external approvals throughout the animation process. Whether you need to liaise with legal, compliance or product teams, every step in our process - from the script, through to the style, through to the storyboard - is presented to you for feedback, amendments and ultimately sign-off before moving to the next stage. We capture changes, feedback and amendments throughout the process in clear, easy to use checklists, ensuring an evidence trail and documenting that changes do actually change.
At the storyboard stage, you'll have every frame of the animation drawn in a sketch style before being created in the final style. This is especially useful for regulatory teams who can sign off on the accuracy and compliance of the animation before anything is actually animated.
If regulatory feedback comes in, we have the ability to quickly update content without starting from scratch. Our experience working on animations with strict compliance, legal and regulatory needs means we know the questions to ask at the start, to save time and reduce the need for major revisions later.
Can you update animations when our science or products evolve?
One of the brilliant advantages to working with animation is just how easy it is to make future updates or changes. Because we create everything from scratch, we have all the files to quickly amend stats, update disclaimers or add future benefits to your medical equipment.
We create any project in a modular way, using the concept of scenes. Each scene is a building block that we string together to create the overall video. We do this precisely so we can update a scene with amendments, now or in the future, without having to re-time and change the entire animation. Making it quick and easy to adapt to feedback, approvals and future innovations. This is why it’s more cost-effective to update an existing animation than creating entirely new one.
How do you approach sensitive or complex medical topics in animations?
No matter how sensitive or complex your medical topic, all information needs to be explained simply. We work closely with your clinical experts to understand all the nuances and sensitivities involved. To make this work, you need to break down complex medical information into clear, bite-sized chunks. We balance sections of technical detail with sections of simplicity. We all appreciate contrast. Whether that's in the visuals of an animation, or the narrative flow of information. We also use visual metaphors and analogies when appropriate to make scientific concepts more accessible without oversimplification. For sensitive topics, we consider the emotional impact of the content and then develop a careful script that uses compassionate, appropriate language.
Consider how you can change the perspective of your content too. Perhaps start outside the body, then go to the cellular level, then showing a patient experience, then showing a piece of medical equipment or a device, before returning to clinical detail.
Throughout the process, we create multiple review points specifically for sensitivity checks with internal or external teams. Any medical animation that addresses sensitive topics needs to consider accessibility of the information, having the right balance of clinical detail with human context, and making it respectful to the audience.
How do medical animations support the training of healthcare professionals?
Medical animations help train HCPs by standardising the information, creating scenario based training, and showing the hard (or impossible) to visualise. Anatomy and procedures can be shown from multiple angles that you just couldn't see otherwise. You’re giving clinicians the ability to explore inside joints or watch blood flow through vessels in ways live video could never capture.
You can also train for rare cases or high-risk procedures without putting anyone at risk. Your videos then become on-demand, so clinicians can access exactly when needed, whether before a procedure or as a quick brush-up.
When protocols change, updating animations is quick and easy – no need to gather the team for expensive reshoots. If you think procedures might evolve, we'll build your animation with easy-to-update sections. Several studies have shown that using animation improves retention compared to reading manuals, helping your team master techniques faster and more thoroughly.
Still have questions?
Don't hesitate to get in touch!
