Richard Obedian MD is a strong believer in educating his patients on all of the procedures and treatment options available to them. He decided that he did not want to simply hand patients a typical medical booklet when they walked out of his office. Many of the traditional medical booklets contained either too much or too little information. Sometimes, procedures were reduced to seem like nothing or they were too complicated to understand.

Richard Obedian MD wanted to offer his patients something a bit more savvy and interactive, as well as practical and clear. With the help of a web designer and some ideas from other surgeons, Richard Obedian MD posted interactive animations of the most commonly performed procedures on his website. It took a fair bit of time to get the information and graphics just right, but the finished product has proved to be quite useful over and over again.

“I wanted to be able to say to my patients – check this out when you get home or we will even view a procedure on my tablet during the consultation. The interactive animations are so easy to understand and help patients who are more visual anyway,” states Richard Obedian MD. If the patient watches the procedure during the consultation, they can pause it and ask questions right there on the spot. Richard Obedian MD thinks that this makes his patients feel much more at ease about procedures that sound much more complicated than they really are.

“Even for my most non-savvy patients, some of whom are older folks, they really appreciate the simplicity of the animations. I have received nothing but positive feedback on the feature,” says Richard Obedian MD. The website features animations for procedures for the elbow, foot and ankle, hand, hip, knee, shoulder, and spine. Each animation can be printed out for the patient into a booklet form as well.

“Almost everyone is carrying around a smart phone or tablet these days. Those of us who weren’t that visual have become more visual with all this at our fingertips. It was just obvious to me that something informative and interactive on the website would be a hit,” says Richard Obedian MD.