There are many ways to make a name for yourself in the healthcare industry.
Most B2Bs come out with a revolutionary product or service that redefines patient care. Some build medical services to give healthcare professionals a chance at saving lives.
But such efforts only guarantee results when B2Bs include “trust” into the equation.
“Gaining the trust of healthcare audiences” is easy to say but hard to realize in actual practice. This is where medical animation can help B2Bs in healthcare make a difference.
And in this blog, I will take you on a comprehensive journey where we explore this fascinating visual medium from all angles.
On the surface, medical animation is the use of animation to make medical concepts easy to understand.
But if you want something concrete, Wikipedia defines it as:
“A medical animation is a short educational film, usually based around a physiological or surgical topic, that is rendered using 3D computer graphics.”
While this definition pertains to a more medical use case and relies on 3D animation, medical animation can also be used across many more B2B healthcare marketing initiatives and can be created using various animation styles.
From showcasing medical equipment to training medical professionals on ethical patient communication.
This style of healthcare videos packs in more than they show.
Let’s explore the many facets of medical animation in our next section.
Medical animation wears many faces.
But that is to be expected, considering it’s a highly dynamic visual medium.
So to make sense of the real dynamism of medical animation, I have outlined 5 important types most commonly used by B2Bs in the healthcare space.
Starting with…
A survey conducted by Yans Media found explainer videos to be the most effective type of video content by 55% of people.
Explainer videos are the most effective type of video content (Source: Yans Media)
You already know why this is the case.
But for the sake of iterating…
Explainer video production use simple and engaging animations to break down complex concepts into easily digestible information.
And when used in a medical setting, its effectiveness is even more profound.
This type of medical animation often incorporates visual metaphors and straightforward language to make the content accessible to a broad audience.
Its relevance for B2B healthcare brands is also immense to say the least.
As an educational medium, explainer medical animation videos are a great way to make patients and medical professionals aware of your product and services.
Building trust and credibility in the process and making it easier to communicate value propositions as well.
Medical animation isn’t just confined to medical concepts. Using animation for medical products helps a lot with product demonstrations too.
In fact, when it comes to influencing purchase decisions, personalized product demo videos are among the most preferred, as found in a study by Gartner.
Personalized product demonstrations are highly preferred in purchase decisions (Source: Gartner)
Though these findings mostly pertain to B2B SaaS video marketing and purchase patterns of software users.
We can safely extrapolate these findings to medical animation as well.
Mostly because the mechanism that makes product demonstrations effective remains the same regardless of where you use it.
Coming back to our discussion, medical product animation videos bring medical products to life using the power of visual storytelling.
They highlight features, benefits, and proper usage of the products from a user’s perspective.
For healthcare brands, product demonstration videos are vital for convincing potential buyers of the efficacy and safety of their medical products.
Aiding in the decision-making process of medical professionals and procurement teams.
Not to mention, these healthcare marketing videos help establish the brand as a credible authority that other healthcare consumers can rely on.
Our latest video marketing survey found 96% of people finding animated educational videos useful in increasing retention and understanding.
Videos are a great tool for boosting retention and understanding (Source: B2W’s Video Marketing Survey 2024)
And when you shift your focus to medical animation, this finding holds even more significance.
But in this scenario, educational videos become training videos or tutorial videos.
Such health animation videos are an amazing medium to:
These medicine animation videos provide step-by-step guidance to ensure thorough understanding and proper implementation.
B2B healthcare brands that use medical animation in their training content build a more coherent dialogue with their audience.
It can either be a discourse on a self-medication procedure for patients. Or it can be a visual guide for medical professionals on how to use their medical products and services. Either way, such videos:
You get the point.
In a survey on the importance of effective communication in healthcare, Sermo found something interesting.
They saw 57% of medical professionals finding delays in receiving information the most frustrating part about healthcare communication.
Information delay is a big hurdle in healthcare communication (Source: Sermo)
As a B2B brand in healthcare, it’s easy to look at this from a corporate perspective.
But I want you to look at these numbers from the eyes of a medical professional.
Delays and miscommunications can lead to a grave medical mistake that may not be overturned.
Ultimately putting patient care at risk. And no medical professional would want to find themselves in such a situation.
This is what makes healthcare communication one of the most important aspects of medical care.
Medical animation in the form of internal communication videos can help you out here.
They help establish clear and scientific communications in healthcare organizations, be it among patients or employees within the B2B healthcare brand.
These can include updates on new protocols, overview on company policies, or announcements of organizational changes.
For B2B healthcare brands, this ensures that all medical personnel are aligned with the company's goals, procedures, and values.
Leading to improved efficiency and a stronger organizational culture.
The latest numbers from WiserNotify show 92.4% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase after reading a trusted review online.
Online reviews are a major denominator in influencing B2B purchase decisions (Source: WiserNotify)
Which goes to show the importance of customer testimonials really well—and the same applies to testimonial videos when used with medical animation.
Such videos feature real-time experiences of patients and medical professionals with your products or services.
The way these patient animation videos recreate scenarios to emphasize the positive outcomes and benefits reported by users makes them a powerful tool for building social proof, encouraging healthcare audiences to keep coming back to your B2B healthcare brand.
You might still be thinking...
Is medical animation worth the investment?
So let’s sweeten the deal for your B2B healthcare brand and look at some of the major reasons why you should consider adopting medical animation in your healthcare marketing campaigns.
Let’s start our exploration with…
According to a Wyzowl report, 44% of people prefer watching a short video to learn about a product or service over any other format.
Visual content is very important for B2B purchase decisions (Source: Wyzowl)
But if I had to sum this trend up in a single sentence, it would be:
What consumers see, they believe.
This is what makes visual appeal a powerful denominator in building a memorable brand perception and awareness.
Medical animations are visually striking and can creatively illustrate abstract or microscopic processes that are difficult to capture with traditional video or static images.
Enhanced visual appeal can make B2B marketing materials more attractive and compelling. Drawing in potential healthcare clients and retaining their interest.
Imagine if one medical professional was stating an important fact.
Only for it to change across the board as you meet more people working in your field, or as you make the switch from PA to MD bridge programs.
In such a situation, “chaos” would be quite the understatement.
Which is why consistent messaging is very crucial. Not only from a branding perspective but also from a revenue perspective as pointed out by latest statistics from Influencer Marketing Hub.
It showed having a consistent brand story increased future purchases by 55%, among many more benefits.
The importance of consistent messaging (Source: Influencer Marketing Hub)
Medical animation ensures that your message remains consistent every time it is viewed.
By using animation in the medical field, healthcare B2B brands can ensure their complex information is delivered uniformly, reducing the risk of miscommunication.
An extensive survey on content personalization by Startup Bonsai found several benefits of personalization.
The benefits of content personalization (Source: Startup Bonsai)
Starting from boosting customer testimonials and referral marketing ROI to boosting B2B lead generation efforts.
But customizable content takes the appeal of personalization to the next level.
With such content, the viewer can not only see its relevance but also adjust it to their preference.
And such flexibility is easily possible with medical animation.
Healthcare animation videos can be customized and updated to reflect new data, changes in medical protocols, or specific audience needs anytime the need arises.
Medical animation can also be used in innovative ways through mediums like interactive videos to further personalize the viewing experience.
This can help B2Bs keep their medical content relevant and up-to-date, tailoring their messages to different stakeholders, whether they are addressing medical professionals, patients, or internal teams.
I say this often, and I’ll say it again...
Your videos need to feel like a conversation, not a sales pitch.
In a B2B healthcare setting, this is a crucial distinction. In other words, you need to build an emotional rapport with your audience.
This is backed by recent numbers from Fit Small Business, highlighting the importance of emotional selling across several marketing channels.
The importance of emotional selling across several marketing channels (Source: Fit Small Business)
Sure, you need to drive sales to increase revenue and grow your business. But it’s not the only factor that guarantees the success of healthcare marketing strategies.
You also need to show your audience that your business is a friend in need.
And that comes from building an emotional connection that stays with them far longer than any sales pitch would ever do.
Medical animation provides you an avenue to do just that.
It humanizes your brand and your medical content by incorporating relatable characters and scenarios, making it easier for viewers to feel in-touch with your message.
Did you know that the total number of video viewers worldwide was 3.78 billion as of 2024?
Total number of video viewers worldwide (Source: Meetanshi)
For perspective, that’s almost 43% of the world’s population that watches online videos.
This highlights the vast reach of video content and how easily it can be consumed and shared as needed, making it accessible to a wider audience.
In the healthcare field, medical animation videos can be shared and consumed regardless of varying levels of medical knowledge.
This gives B2B healthcare brands a solid chance to expand their reach, engage more stakeholders and vendors, and ensure that their messages are understood by all relevant parties—including international markets where language barriers exist and the need for video localization is ever-present.
It isn’t enough to just know the types of medical animation at your disposal.
You also need to see it in action.
So when you produce your medical animation video, you know exactly what you’re doing.
I’ll take you through amazing medical animation examples to drive my point home. Let’s start our exploration with…
Here's a fun little medical trivia to get the ball rolling.
According to the American College of Rheumatology, around 790,000 knee replacement surgeries are performed in the US every year.
This makes it one of the most common surgical procedures in the medical field.
But just because a procedure is common doesn’t mean its knowledge is widespread.
This is what makes this 2D medical animation from Bupa Health so valuable—it takes viewers on a layman’s journey through knee replacement surgery.
It covers how the procedure is carried out and the conditions required for a successful surgery.
But the standout feature is how it doesn’t talk down to the viewer, regardless of their medical knowledge.
It levels the playing field for curious viewers, knee replacement patients, and rheumatology professionals alike, making it one of the top medical animations on this list.
Thermofisher wanted to educate forensic laboratories in emerging markets.
These labs usually have small throughput, and they either have no automation or have several smaller throughput instruments.
As medical animators, we used a mix of 2D and 3D medical animations to explain how Thermofisher’s device automates most of the extraction process.
The system is a walkway, meaning the device handler can set it up and be free to work on other tasks.
The primary use case was at conferences where it is impossible to display the instrument itself physically.
They wanted viewers to understand the instrument and visualize how it works.
They also wanted to use this medical device animation in a video email marketing campaign to drive targeted customers to increase viewership and request a product demo to learn more about it.
Fibrogen develops transformative medical therapies based on innovative science.
They wanted to explain the science of how Roxadustat is a completely new and physiological approach to treating chronic kidney disease (CKD).
They wanted their medical animation video to speak to nephrologists and nephrology healthcare professionals who treat patients with chronic kidney disease with or without dialysis.
They wanted these professionals to understand and be comfortable with the medical science behind Roxadustat, how it works, and its Mechanism of Action.
On the other hand, those looking into launching new corporations or business ventures in the healthcare sector, understanding the intricacies of such innovative treatments done by Fibrogen and their market potential is crucial.
So, we used the power of storytelling and whiteboard animations to educate the audience, keeping the scientific details intact but simplified and making the subject interesting.
OrthAlign is a medical device technology company that develops computer-assisted devices for implant placement in hip and knee replacement surgeries.
They wanted to target orthopedic surgeons and bring them up to speed on modern methods of these procedures.
To help OrthAlign achieve this, we used infographic animations and motion graphic animations in their video.
This medical device animation video highlights how their product provides an accurate, efficient, and cost-effective solution for joint replacement surgeries, presenting the information in a format ideal for hospital and ambulatory surgery center environments.
They wanted to host this YouTube video on their landing page, and promote it through online advertising campaigns with a compelling video CTA (contact OrthAlign for more information).
Check out some of the best video CTA examples here for inspiration for your own videos.
Disc herniation is more common than you might think. A study from Physiopedia found that a herniated disc affects 5 to 20 adults per 1000 adults every year.
But before we attack the problem, it’s essential to understand it first.
This was SpineCal Orthopedic Institute’s goal when they reached out to us for an explainer video on disc herniation.
Along with showing how to treat this condition, they wanted to paint a complete picture of what the condition is and what causes it. And we helped SpineCal do this with a 3D medical animation video.
Using detailed high-quality 3D modeling, SpineCal takes viewers on a walkthrough of the surgical procedure to treat a herniated disc.
This healthcare animation video covers all the technical steps in a way that feels like listening to a story, ensuring that the viewer is invested from the very beginning.
1981 was the year when the first domestic case of AIDS was detected in the United States.
Soon, the AIDS epidemic followed, leading to massive awareness campaigns in the 1990s.
Back then, printed media and commercial ads were among the few awareness tools at your disposal.
But things have changed now and we have 3d medical animation videos to do the job for us.
As an example, here’s a healthcare animation video from Nucleus Medical Media which picks apart the effects of HIV and AIDS on the human body.
It starts off by showing the state of white blood cells in a healthy immune system.
Subsequently pointing our attention to how HIV affects the immune system on a granular level, making the body susceptible to acquiring AIDS later on.
The video concludes with a discussion on certain antiretroviral medications that are commonly used to treat HIV and AIDS.
Among the many neurological disorders we know of today, perhaps Parkinson’s Disease is one of the most common.
The Parkinson’s Foundation estimates that there are more than 10M people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease all around the world.
Which makes you wonder: What causes this devastating neurological disorder in the first place?
Nature Neuroscience gets into the details in this mixed-media animation video that explains the progression of Parkinson’s from a neurological perspective.
It features a mix of live-action footage and 3d medical animations to give a real-world perspective of the disease and how it affects bodily functions.
Since we’re on the subject of neuroscience, here’s an interesting medical trivia to get your neurons firing.
The term “synapse” was first coined by an English neurophysiologist named Charles Sherrington in 1897.
Back then, the field of neuroscience was in its infancy, and in many cases, a foreign concept altogether.
While neuroscience has made strides ever since, learning about concepts like “synapses” and “neurons” still requires an extra effort.
But the use of animation in medical field has eased this effort tremendously and Harvard Online shows you how in this stop-motion animation video.
It starts at the grassroots by defining a synapse and showing its function using detailed animation.
The animation (closely resembling claymation) uses a clever blend of contrasting colors and humorous character design.
This makes understanding the workings of the synapse easier on the eyes—not to mention, a bit easier on the brain too.
Did you know that Salmonella affects 1.4 million people in the United States every year?
I didn’t know this either– till I came across this 2D medical animation video from Kasra Designs.
It tells us everything we need to know about Salmonella from the ground up.
It starts by highlighting the common food items that carry the Salmonella virus.
Followed by giving a time horizon within which initial symptoms start showing, with a comprehensive discussion of what the symptoms look like and how to prevent them.
A topic like Salmonella, which has many moving parts, now seems easy to understand thanks to this healthcare video.
This is what makes it one of the top medical animations on this list.
They say: Prevention is better than cure.
But prevention requires awareness.
And when it comes to medical conditions, the importance of awareness can't be stressed enough.
So when Health Monitor Network (HMN) reached out to us for a video, they weren't looking to just make another healthcare explainer video on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
They wanted to tell the story of COPD from a patient’s perspective.
Adding medical animation to shed light on preventive steps by discussing its defining symptoms and its progression in the human body.
And the use of character animation helped them talk to COPD patients and interested medical professionals without scaring them.
Medical animation is used by a variety of professionals and organizations, such as researchers, surgeons, pharma companies, medical device manufacturers, universities, hospitals, and nonprofits.
These groups use animations to simplify complex medical topics and make them easier to understand for different audiences.
Usually, their target audiences are patients, healthcare providers, investors, and researchers.
To effectively deliver their message to these audiences, the groups use medical illustrations in their presentations, training, websites, virtual reality, social media, and marketing materials.
They use these animations because they’re especially useful for explaining difficult topics that can’t be easily conveyed with words or still images, like molecular processes or step-by-step procedures.
By visualizing these complex concepts, medical animations increase the accessibility and understanding of science and healthcare.
Medical animation does the one thing that’s most important in healthcare—it helps patients understand their health.
It visually explains medical procedures, treatment plans, and how different parts of the body function.
Instead of confusing people with complex medical jargon, these videos use clear, engaging, and cutting-edge visuals to simplify everything.
One of the biggest advantages of patient animation is its ability to bridge the communication gap between doctors and patients, making healthcare feel less intimidating.
Plus, scientific animations are far more engaging than pamphlets or long explanations.
They keep patients interested and informed, and when that happens, they’re more likely to follow their treatment plans—leading to better health outcomes.
The cost depends on several factors, including video length, animation style, level of detail, overall production process, and delivery time.
To give you a ballpark range for our medical animation studio’s pricing, most of our 2D animation explainer videos range between $2,400 and $4,800, depending on the complexity of the animation.
For general reference, whiteboard animation is the least expensive, and 3D animation is the most costly.
Medical animation is an investment into the future.
It not only helps brands leverage animation to build trust in the healthcare space.
It also articulates the pain points of healthcare audiences in a way they feel understood.
But to put numbers to perspective:
The question now comes to the B2B players in healthcare. Are you keeping up with the growing adoption of medical animation?
If you are, keep going.
If not, this blog is your stepping stone to becoming an authority in the healthcare industry—with medical animation as the vehicle that takes you there.
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