Harnessing Medical Illustration and Scientific Animation In Your Business and Product & Development Lifecycle | LSI USA '25

Justin Klein  0:05  
All right, hello everybody. Thank you so much for coming. This is good, nice, little small crowd, so we will get this. What's that intimate? Yes, it is. It's intimate, and you're going to learn a lot. Trust me, I'm going to try my very best to give you as much value in the next 40 minutes. And one thing that I do like about this industry is there's no shortage of long vocabulary words, right? So let's just lean into this title here and and we'll get going. So I'm Justin Klein, and I'm a board certified medical illustrator. I run a creative agency named mitopop, and at mitopop, we help life science companies explain their science visually. Now we do this through digital design strategy like websites and going here, like websites and presentations, and our deep wheelhouse is medical illustration and Scientific Animations. Images sell ideas. They create that quick, get that words alone can't produce and mitop Pop, we are experts at creating visual content that helps pharma, biotech, Medtech, med device and patient education that helps their science pop. So our clients range from range, from principal investigators in academia to startups all the way through to to Fortune companies, multinational Fortune companies. And so today I'm going to be talking about three things, and this is for the startups in the crowd. We're going to talk about, first, kind of bring it back a little bit. We're going to organize, categorize what creative roles are out there, and kind of define them and also where to find them. So Talent Search. Second thing, why medical illustration. And the third, pretty much the title of this, this, of this workshop, and that is leveraging creative services for leveraging creative services for your business strategies and your your pipeline, your workflow. Alright, this is a real workshop, so we are going to do at least one exercise if you want to pull up your phone and punch this in, there is some material here on it, mitop, pop.com/lsi, and then up here on stage you see ha MD and Kwame. I will give them a more formal introduction, just in a little bit. So sit tight, gentlemen. Looking good. Thank you. All right, here we go. So creative rules, how many people here show of hands drive a car? So it looks like everybody, even you guys in the back there, yeah, it's true, nobody in. La, nobody walks in. La, well, Orange County, same, same. Now, what happens when your car doesn't work? You take your car to an auto body shop? No, you take your car to an engine mechanic. They'll get your car running again. But an auto body shop, they work on cars too, right? Well, the same thing goes when you're trying to visually communicate your key messages and your ideas. The Graphic Design umbrella is very large and and despite some overlap, there is nuance with the roles that you would commission or contract for a project. So if you look on your if you look on that top level of the website there, Mitel, pop.com/lsi, you will see a definition, a set of definitions, little small on these screens, so it might be easier on your phones. So that's what the options there, if you don't mind, take, like, I don't know, 45 seconds and just skim over so we can start that clock now. All right, it looks like most of you are good to go. So just a quick Skim is fine. So what we see here is a marketing campaign, some elements from a marketing campaign, and what I had overlapped or kind of dropped over that is I mapped the different roles that were responsible for creating these elements. Now at the top we have a creative director, Creative Director, they typically work with the upper level executive. Initiatives, and they help bridge the business strategy with the communication initiatives under them is going to be an art director here. I have two. It depends on how much volume or how many verticals you have in your company, but or the channels that they are working on. But essentially, they're responsible for creating the themes and the templates of the brand style under them. In production, you're going to have your layout artists or your graphic designers, and they're pulling all the content together to populate those templates. And that content is coming from the creators. Creators are going to be medical illustrators, animators, photographers, copywriters, even programmers. So we're going to do our first hopefully. This makes sense here. We're going to do our first activity. So there's enough of you here. If you want to pair up, that would be fantastic. Don't be shy. If you want to see we got some folks here, if you two and back, would be good, or you could do it on your own. It's okay. We're going to hire the creative team. So if you want mentally, or you could write down digitally, you have a pen there. If you want to pick out a pen and paper. Let's do this. Here is a prompt. I'll provide a prompt with a creative brief, and that brief is going to explain kind of the situation that you're in and the objective and the salute the challenges that you have. All right, so couple assumptions here. Don't worry about the budget. You have enough budget. Let's say we'll keep it to like five roles, and you could double up those roles as well. So if you have, if you need two illustrators or multiple programmers or something, you can put that in as well. All right, so here we go. Here are the two prompts again. They're on your they're in the website as well. If it's easier to kind of read that it's trying to read the room. If you guys are interested, it looks like Steve over there is game. Thank you. And this is quick. This is like two minutes, 90 seconds, throwing already. I think we're good. All right, so who, who picked prompt a? You to prompt a and Steve, alright, let's go. Let's go OOF fight. We'll go here first, Steve, I'll get you after. So what did you come up of we we have what is it? It's a wearable device. And the solution, the challenges and the assets you need are illustrations to show how the device works, a pitch deck and a website.

Audience Question  7:53  
Okay? We chose a programmer, Illustrator, graphic designer, art director and a copy writer. 

Justin Klein  8:00  
Okay, which one of those are? Did you note contract versus full time? That's okay. And then for the illustrator, I'm just curious, what kind of Illustrator? Oh, great. So a medical illustrator, and that's great. All right, you win. That's it, perfect. So the reason why I bring that up there is a distinction, right? So you can have traditional illustrators, and when I say traditional, more 2d focused type style, where you can have 3d and seeing how this is a medical device company, it probably would benefit if you had a 3d type illustrator or artist, because once you model that and and the process of the pipeline there is, you might even have CAD for manufacturing involved. You can grab those elements, but they have to be cleaned up, not for manufacturing, but rather for visual display. So it's a slightly different there's some there's some, there's adjustments that are need, that need to be made. There texture, lighting, you know, seam, setup and etc. But the goal is, once you have that available in your library, you can then leverage that and iterate on that as you, as your company develops, as the product develops, and you iterate so that library element can ride with it. Who had B? Just curious, did anyone pick B? Anyone pick B? No, over there is lady you did Sorry. Okay, thank you. Yeah, okay, great. Tell me what you came up with.

Audience Question  9:37  
So I just did, I did the creative director, and I let that be part-time, an art director also part time, but I needed a full time graphic designer, part time photographer and a part-time

Justin Klein  9:55  
okay, that's right. Did you have for the graphic designer? What. What was there any specialty you were thinking about? 

Audience Question  10:03  
Like, graphic designer. I would go for someone who's done and customer facing. Like products, a consumer to I, like just a regular consumer. 

Justin Klein  10:13  
Got it. Okay, got it. And what about like, UI, UX? And there

Audience Question  10:19  
UI, UX, I would still probably get someone who has some device like Medtech UI experience, but has done some other types of tips you were facing. 

Justin Klein  10:33  
Okay, why wouldn't you leave that for the creative director? Then

Audience Question  10:38  
what would I leave for the creative director? I think for them, it's because this can be in my videos, it's gonna be very important to ensure that you have very cohesive message. I felt like that was the creative director's goal is to make sure that all of those things are coming together. Is each person is going to be providing certain content,

Justin Klein  11:01  
right? And the creative director here would be delegating to the team. They'd kind of organize the team. And so, yes, perfect. You know, one thing that's interesting, I was always taught that websites are kind of like the invisible employee. You still need a like a salaried person, because once you have it commissioned and you have it built, you don't want it to die or wither on the vine. You need to keep updating it, whether it's every week or every month or quarter. And the reason why is you need to look fresh all the time. That is definitely a telltale sign if it's kind of old and stagnant and you're there's no cohesion when you're up presenting and your your pitch deck looks amazing. And then someone follows up, and they go to the website and like, Oh, this is, you know, 2018 All right, so, you know, keep that in mind, there are people who need to update the website, and that's going to be either art director or graphic designer depending. So keeping them on for not as a retainer, but just kind of keeping a relationship there. They already know the the the CMS and etc, etc. So that's good. All right, perfect. So now that we know what the roles are, just like any other recruiting initiative. What are some qualities that you would look for in a creative candidate? Steve, what would you look for?

Audience Question 2  12:31  
History? What they have worked on, projects that they align with your project?

Justin Klein  12:37  
Yeah, what's a would that be called? Starts with a P portfolio. That's good. So portfolio, top of the list, very good. Anything else? Anyone else? Yes, yes, listening. That's on the list. Did you see my deck? Here we go. So portfolio, top of the list. Ding. And we have listening in there as well. So those are also very you know, you can move that out to other candidates and other disciplines and stuff as well. But what's cool about this is, what we're looking for is the base. These are the kind of, the minimum, the minimum requirements for any good creative candidate. And keep in mind, we're also hiring commercial artists, not fine artist, right? You might have a great pet painter or pet portrait painter, but they just may not have the technical vocabulary or the skills to keep going. And this seems obvious, but I have met prospect of clients who come to me and say, my last artist did this, and it's just it's just not right, it wasn't appropriate, and that's why they were having trouble. So I'm just going to call out time management real quick. Just because you're delegating doesn't mean that your lack of good time management is is the artist problem. Things take time. If you have an ambitious project that needs to be done in a week, and everyone's telling you it's going to take a month to do the old adage, you know, just respect the process. The old adage here, what is it? Uh, nine women can't make one baby in one month. Just doesn't work, right? It doesn't work. Okay, cool. So, um, so where do we find these folks, right? So we know they do. We know how to hire them. Now we have to go get them all right. And this is the this is the good stuff. So as much as I like to take all the work in the world, there's so much of it, let's share it, right? So we can go to portfolio websites. These portfolio websites are basically subscriber generated. Portfolios. So each firm or an individual, they will put up their websites. You their their artwork. You can search. It's a filtered search, so if you know exactly what you're looking for, you can get that their Behance is pretty popular, Cora flat, and I think was the other one I listed there, dribble with three Bs. There's also head hunters, right? Staffing Agencies, so creative circle, Robert Half, they're kind of the same. They have artists, a collective of artists, but they will gate keep them. So you ask them what you're looking for. They will curate three or four candidates, and then they'll let you pick and the nice thing about them is they handle the admin and the payroll and stuff, usually there as well. Now one thing too to keep in mind is those gig websites like fiverr.com I highly it might work for you once in a while, but I highly recommend not to do that, because you run the risk of reliability, incompetence, copyright infringement. The same thing goes with AI, artificial intelligence. You know, they're using their their training that what is it they're their AI is basically remixing, is recombining patterns from their training data. It's also not creative. It's a machine. There's going to be no human insight or anything. And even if you think their output is good, that's because you just haven't seen it. They're not they're not doing anything but reinventing real it's it's not good, and it's just not ready yet, let alone copyright. You can't copyright anything as of now. There's been a couple cases that that do that, have said that copyright does, does not, is not allowed with any AI output. And then the last year is professional organizations. We have the AI, G A that's where you can find creative creative directors, art directors, typographers, graphic designers. We have the Association of Medical illustrators, which I am a part of, which I'm a part of, and my colleague Steve over there check out his booth, artery studios. And then we have the guild of Natural Science illustrators, so they focus more on natural like Earth Science, things like that. And there's some overlap with like veterinary science, etc. There are lists of members there who are Vikings at their craft. So I highly recommend it. And here's just a quick roll up there. What's the first thing that you will create? Now that you have your you know, where you find your talent, you've hired them, what are you going to make? Does anyone creative brief is good, but after the creative brief, what visual content are we going to create? Are we going to create a we could use Alluvia here, she does branding. We going to create a logo, some kind of identity? No, are we going to create a pitch deck? No, we're going to create a mechanism of action illustration, or your platform diagram, because that is what is going to stick in your audience's heads before you do anything else you gotta get, even if it's a napkin sketch, right? So let's talk about that. Here we go. So let's go with the WHO medical illustrators are more than just they do more than just create beautiful artwork. The images are a result of research. It's result of research to to understanding, then to design, conceptualization and then communication, and so essentially, what we really do is we are crafting the message. Visualization just happens to be the easiest way to convey that message. The process. You wouldn't build a house without blueprints. Otherwise you'd end up with a toilet bowl next to the kitchen sink, right? Same thing here. After we get your notes and intake, we are going to we're going to put into a creative brief, and from there, we can start our sketches. We have the objective, we start our sketches, and a couple rounds of sketches we are going to work on really understanding how the content looks, composition, things like that. By the time we finalize the sketches, we can move into the rendering what the final artwork is going to look like, and by that time, changes are very minimal. We're looking at change this caption, just move this over here. Nothing's. Structural and then we lock that down. It's time for deployment. So it's just media prep. Is it going to go into a social video website? That's where we're at there. All right, so why good medical illustrations answer questions and their effectiveness lies with how well your audience learns. This is what allows you to move on to other material in your presentation. You want any any objections in your audience? All right, so images sell ideas. They they create that quick, get that words alone can't produce. And so I think for time, yeah, we're watching kind of cruise along. Here's a real quickly. Here's an IFU technique card, and this is for a device that is meant to be deployed in the field, and it's a burr. It's a skull Burr. And if you notice here, what we did was we very little text, so it's more picture based. People are trained on it, but they're probably never going to use it, except once in a while. And therefore, we have a lot of iconography to help guide where and how to hold the device. There's extra steps that are very easily identifiable, to 123, right, and to prep everything. And even the artwork isn't, isn't overly produced, very simple line work with some shading just to kind of help highlight and lift some of the important features that are going on there. So this is a good example of showing and communicating an idea with pictures kind of, kind of like the IKEA instructions, but for a medical device here. And this is why having good artwork is important, because it could actually save a life. All right, gentlemen, here we go. So with me, let me just tell you about this. LEM about this process a little bit here. So what we tried to do is, and this is still in development, so pardon the graphic, but I'm trying to show from business strategy all the way to sales and marketing. These are high level steps of everything that you're going to need to do to develop your product. And then what I mapped up on top are icons of what the different types of visual touch points that you would be using

or employing during these phases, some of them repeat. So instead of kind of listing everything out, let me tell you a little story. This is about a client that we have, and unfortunately, I can't show any samples because we're under NDA, but we started working with them about six, seven years ago, and they had come to us because the problem was they had. The problem was that they had, it's an implantable device. They had their engineering team very smart, and their surgical team, the lab team, also very smart, and they just couldn't understand there was a little friction. They couldn't communicate it and reconcile some of the issues they had. So we were brought on to we were brought on to just create sketches. These were not finished artwork. These weren't anything fancy. And the problem that they had getting these is Google images just had basic Atlas images. They didn't have anything that was worth using or that was custom. So being a medical illustrator, we were able to show illustrations that were of the point of view of the surgeon, it's laparoscopic, and all the different anatomical structures that were that the implant would have to circumvent or go through or pass through. And so right after they went in, immediately, the client was happy, because they were able to reconcile the issues and move on. Now, the cool thing here is, after about a couple months of a couple more labs, the engineers, they got, you know, they extended the lead wire, like, another three centimeters to wrap around this structure, etc, etc. So it's time for FDA free submission. And with that, they're like, Hey, we already have some sketches. Let's leverage a couple of those. So we cleaned, we picked out a couple, created some new ones, and put that into the submission. And they were really happy, because FDA got it. There were no there's no pushback. And then from there, the progress of their development, it went into the IFU, right, the surgical manual. So again, iterating on the techniques that they've they've been developing over time. We had a, you know, update a couple sketches, but those then turned into the final artwork. So that's your line. Artwork is really nice. Very cohesive. And they even had a digital component, like a programmer component, so that can be illustrated as well. The didactic steps involved in that and everything just tied in nicely. But wait, there's more. Because we were the vendor, the legacy vendor, they also asked us, we need to do some patient education, and this is for their IR and their PR output. And so we did a nice patient roadmap, some mechanism of actions that wasn't as gory. So again, for the right audience, we just showed what the indication was and how it solved, how their product solved it. And then we had to even do 3d tabletop hero shots. And so we went through all that, and there's still a lot more that they keep coming back for to update either the manual or other patient manuals, and then they have other verticals. So having a relationship with them really showed how important our stuff is, in addition to the work that they're doing, of course, they're making patients lives much better and and, yeah, so I'm happy to be a part of that. Okay, so on stage here. Let's go Yay. All right, is Kwame Ulmer and I'll give you the long one. Why not ask for so Kwame is the managing partner at Medtech impact partners, bringing over two decades of experience evaluating medical technologies in both the government and private sectors. He is also a venture partner at Wavemaker 360 health, where he leads the Medtech practice and is actively involved in all aspects of fund management, including deal sourcing, diligence negotiation and advising portfolio company management teams. And next to him is Hamed Hanafi. He is the founder and CEO of NovaResp, the company that that's developed a patented software compatible, that has developed a patented software that's compatible with any positive airway pressure. That's pap. You've heard of C pap. So his, his, his software is called C map, and this machine dramatically improves comfort and adherence to therapy for obstructive sleep apnea. So gentlemen, thank you so much for being here today. Full disclosure, Omid and I, we, we work together, so we've done all his mechanism of action illustrations and his animations website, etc, and Kwame we recently introduced, but we are actually two degrees separated, and so the universe is just telling us, let's get together and do it. Here we are. So anyways, gentlemen, let's start. Since we're we were talking about the FDA pre submission, why don't we throw the ball in your corner first? So Kwame, tell me, me, A, C here. Where do you find value in having visual content in the work that you do? Yeah.

Kwame Ulmer  28:14  
So as you were talking, I was thinking about when I first started out on the field, I was a reviewer of pacemaker and defibrillator leads. And in that situation, believe it or not, pacemaker and defibrillator leads are incredibly complex, with unique designs for the wiring and the insulation and an effective illustration from a Medtronic or Boston Scientific helped, just as you indicated, me immediately understand what was different in this technology and the safety implications for needing to test in 10 dogs, as opposed to five dogs. So a good illustration, even for pacemaker, lead was critical, and when we got introduced to the leadless pacemaker, it was equally important to get an illustration of that technology, because we had never seen anything like that before. So when someone says, leelas pacemaker, it took me a minute to even understand what it would look like the surface area in contact with the myocardium, et cetera. So those are two brief examples of where, as an FDA reviewer, illustrations were key. 

Justin Klein  29:21  
And how did the FDA receive that package?

Kwame Ulmer  29:25  
Very positively. You know, it was clear that both companies, Cameron health and Boston Scientific, St Jude, etc, had professionals like you right beyond the scene. So it was really helpful to immediately, as you were indicating, understand the technology, right? 

Justin Klein  29:41  
That's good, yeah. So it is, it's it's real. It's a real phenomenon, and it does help. It is real. How much do you think it seemed in terms of time of, like, on your end, or your client's end of if they didn't have those images?

Kwame Ulmer  29:56  
Well, more recently, we're working with an imaging. Technology that wanted to communicate how was the same and different from other technologies, the image specimens for breast cancer, and we actually sent not only an illustration, but a video. And in that case, for this application type called the 513 G, we think it was incredibly helpful to reduce the number of questions from the FDA on exactly how this works and how it's different in the same from existing technology,

Justin Klein  30:25  
right? So kind of primed the conversation the pump. Yeah, that's it. Perfect. Excellent. Okay, so Ned, do you want to tell Do you want to kind of frame our the history, like where we started? And, 

Hamed Hanafi  30:38  
Yeah, we actually met at LSI a few years back, I always tell Justin that he might be one of the we're located in Canada, East Coast Canada, and he might be one of the only US dollars we're paying right now. And said, and it's worth every penny. I'll explain where this really came handy, because it's a software on a C pop machine. Everybody knows the C pop machine, but explaining of how our technology or software is different from the status quo algorithm called a pop is extremely difficult. I would pitch to investors, and they would still be asking questions. So what is how does it work? But since working with Justin, we could actually bring that into both our pitch decks and as an animation. Recently, I joined a call recently where I actually didn't talk for three minutes, just played the animation and then the next question was, okay, what round of financing Are you in? I didn't need to say anything after.

Justin Klein  31:47  
That's perfect. So it was working for you. Those are dollars well spent. 

Hamed Hanafi  31:50  
Definitely. 

Justin Klein  31:52  
Yeah, that's good. And just to kind of go back how we developed it, it wasn't overnight. I mean, we definitely followed the process First we produced, I think our first, I think the first scope of work we did was a D hand drawn, hand drawn platform diagram. So it kind of had everything that was in the video, but it was just kind of laid out there, so you still had to read it, but it was, it allowed you to think through it. I remember, and I had trouble too, kind of doing my research, but I was asking you questions as an outsider, like, why not this? Or why that? And so was that helpful to go through that process? It

Hamed Hanafi  32:32  
was definitely helpful. And I would bring it back to something that came up about being good listeners. It's not just listening, it's also being able to listen to criticism, to what you drew. Because the previous experience I had was that criticism or like, just saying, you know, I think the technology should present that best way was not be taken well. So I was very timid the first we started working together to give you feedback. I was so worried that you might get offended, because it is your art at the end of the day, even if it's a technology that we're presenting. But the feedback not only was taken well, but also, like now that you knew what I'm trying to present, your artistic vision added to, you know, possibilities that I didn't think about. The other thing is, medical illustration is different from any other illustration. Like the other work, you say for me, is that I didn't have to find the anatomy. And, you know, sketch it for you before you sketch it for me, you already knew where to look and do the precise

Justin Klein  33:36  
work, right? And that kind of brings it back to that point I said earlier. There's a lot of different illustrators out there that have different specialties. So I think you know me trying to keep being me honest with the work, you know, and I'm learning a lot too. This is also very interesting subject matter, and the cause makes it easier as well. You're not going to find me in oil and gas industry just because where we're at, but that's a different commentary there. But here, I think this impact is, I'm glad to see it actually benefit not only you, but your audience as well, because again, they can move on with the rest of the discussion. You know, talking dollars and cents. We've got a couple minutes left. If anyone has any questions, let me see if I can go back here. This is the back button, yeah. So remember, just want to sum up hire or utilize visual content as much as you can. If you're having trouble explaining your project, your your IP, either pencil it out because you end up working through the visual of it and. If you could see it, then you could say it even better, right? And all that information can then go to a professional who can actually draw it better and quicker for you and really leverage that All right, so don't be afraid to use it. It is definitely money well spent. We are not cheap. Me and my colleagues, but we're much cheaper than running around for months and months and months, burning your runway if you can't do it. So check out Steve, he has a booth. It's artery. And also check out Rachel, she's she has a booth Alluvia. They're also kind of in the same sandbox. So and I see Eric there as well. So got some of my friends here. So power we got it. Oh, hey, all right. How you doing, sweet? Sorry. So, yeah. Anyways, that's my time. Questions. Anyone 

Audience Question  35:55  
you're taking questions? 

Justin Klein  35:56  
Yep, questions. 

Audience Question  35:56  
I'm just curious. I just thought of this question, what do you see as the future of medical illustration? Are there new opportunities or trends such as, say 2d moving more to three?

Justin Klein  36:10  
I think, yeah. I think so. The question is, what's the future look like for medical illustration? So, so if you're referencing AI, 

Audience Question  36:21  
I'm not, 

Justin Klein  36:22  
you're not. 

Audience Question  36:23  
So just, I'm looking at all these rich animations, 

Justin Klein  36:25  
yeah, wow. So there's a there's a time and place for everything, right? There's always inappropriateness. Just like fashion, you wouldn't wear flip Flo I wouldn't be wearing flip flops and shorts here, right? Just like I wouldn't wear a tux and a top hat to the beach. So depending on who the audience is, and depending on the medium too. So obviously, you're not going to have an animation in a pamphlet. You're going to need some kind of sequence of of panels or figures to help show something over time in a printed in printed material. So I think the practical, old fashion type art will always be around. It's classic, and it actually persists. There's still cave paintings, right? And so that's how they can communicate it. They didn't have, you know, YouTube, cave tube, I don't know, all right, does that answer your question, yeah,

Audience Question 2  37:21  
I actually just have a comment on that. I thought it was a great point to start with the medical illustration, because we produce a lot of material, and often in our industry, there's nothing sexy. There's nothing sexy to show it. Everything wants to look like Apple and dark caps, you know, and and that's where illustration is really nice, because you can show it in anatomy. You can show in a visually Kili, and you can make it really dynamic in a beauty shot of your product.

Justin Klein  37:48  
That's right, I had an old creative director tell me, sometimes portraits that are painted, it's because they're too ugly for photography. So if you kind of ease off of that. The lead, the logic still is still sound there, yeah, calling the NA just, yeah, exactly. So, good point. Thank you. Anyone else? Do you guys have any comments? Or else again? All right, cool. Well, it looks like we're at time. So thank you very much. Thank you so much. 

Hamed Hanafi  38:23  
Awesome.