An effective communication between doctor and patient is the key factor for delivering comprehensive health care. The best medical advice will not be of any help to patients if they cannot understand it. Nowadays doctors find themselves under extreme time pressure. They have to provide accurate diagnosis, counsel appropriately and give therapeutic instructions in less than 8 minutes. This often does leave not enough time to consult and advise the patient properly. Moreover, a lot of patients cannot understand medical terminology and thus find it hard to follow doctors' explanations. This often leaves them poorly informed and feeling underserved. To improve the communication in healthcare institutions, I developed in collaboration with Maike Kraus and Nora Friedrich, an interactive iPad application that supports doctors in the field of cardiology during the consultation process. The application contains animations and illustrations of different heart diseases and medical interventions. Instead of explaining the complex medical correlations to the patient verbally, the doctor can rely on those illustrations and animations.
