1 Introduction
Infographics like handouts, one-pagers or brochures are combinations of text and imagery commonly used in health care to summarize complex information in a story for health care learners, providers, patients or other audiences.1,2 Infographics are used in health care higher education both for teaching and learners’ projects.3-5 Family Medicine residents, Nurse Practitioner students and other provider learners often make infographics for their scholarly projects. Once in practice, health care providers make infographics for their patients, the facilities they work in, and to disseminate information to the public. Infographics also are effective for mobilizing research findings.6
The evidence base for infographics creation in health care is fragmentary and only just being summarized.7-9 However, we think there is enough consensus for broad brush recommendations. Infographics development begins with needs analysis, then flows through content gathering to design, distribution, and evaluation. The basics of most of the phases are relatively straight-forward, but comprehensive guidance for the design phase is not readily available for those without a background in design. Well-funded teams tend to collaborate with expert designers, marketers and evaluators, but many learners and practitioners do not have access to such expertise.
Our objective for this manual is to summarize published evidence for basic principles of infographics creation, with an emphasis on the design phase. Our primary audiences for this manual are health care provider learners, practitioners, educators and researchers who wish to use infographics in their work but do not have access to professional designers. Our goal is to help with the pressing need to make accurate, unbiased health information readily available to all.
Tip
Don’t dive into designing an infographic before scanning the whole manual. It won’t take long.
Scope
This manual is intended only as a basic resource for health professionals in creating infographics. It does not establish a standard for course work or practice. We are not design experts, though we have assisted in developing infographics and in overseeing learners who make infographics during their training. While the manual does not cover the development of apps or interactive online tools for disseminating knowledge, some of the principles in this manual can apply to those tasks as well.
Next Steps
The evidence base for much of this guidance remains incomplete. Knowledge mobilization is evolving extremely rapidly in this digital age. We imagine a near future where digital systems will profoundly change the way learners and practitioners create and disseminate evidence-based information for their audiences. Digital systems already can function as expert consultants and assistants in ways that supplement the manual processes we describe in this manual. But, for the foreseeable future, informed expert human oversight will be needed to judge the output from digital systems. So, we invite you to tell us what you like and don’t like about the manual. This manual will be revised with your feedback and as new information emerges from research studies and expert guidance.