Patient Education Video Case Study

One video in this set explains how molecular screening can catch cancer before it develops. Another explains how to name a healthcare representative who can make decisions on your behalf. Motifmotion produced six patient education videos for Hackensack Meridian Health spanning that entire distance.

Most patient education work covers one procedure or one condition. This covers a patient's whole arc, from hereditary risk before any diagnosis through to advance care planning after a serious one.

That range is the difficulty. The tone that works for a prevention video is wrong for an end-of-life conversation, and the set still has to look and feel like one program.

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Case Study

Hackensack Meridian Health – Kidney cancer and cancer interception

We produced six patient education videos for Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey's largest healthcare network. A four-part 2024 series covers cancer interception, robot-assisted surgery, the multidisciplinary care team, and advance care planning. Two further 2025 pieces cover hereditary cancer risk and the three treatment pathways for localized kidney cancer.

Taken together they follow one patient journey rather than one procedure, which is unusual for work of this kind and is the reason the set holds up as a program.

ClientHackensack Meridian Health

TypePatient Education / Oncology

Amount6 Videos

Style2D Animation, Character Driven, Infographic

Animated scene of a cyclist in a park from a Hackensack Meridian Health patient education video

Animated surgical robots illustrating robot-assisted surgery for kidney cancer, from a Motifmotion patient education video

Animated still showing uropathologist role — microscope, petri dishes, and lab reports — from a Hackensack kidney cancer care team video

Animated family and care team discussing end-of-life preferences in a living room — step 5 of an advanced care planning video

Intercepting Cancer Before It Happens

One pathway, not one procedure

The six pieces run in sequence rather than sitting side by side. Hereditary cancer opens the arc by naming the signal a family should notice, multiple relatives diagnosed, which points to an inherited risk worth testing for.

Interception follows, with the pathway shown as concrete touchpoints: a personal and family-history questionnaire, a nurse navigator, and the option to meet a genetic counselor. Diagnosis then sets out the three treatment paths for localized kidney cancer, surgery, ablation, and active surveillance, before the surgery video walks through what robot-assisted removal actually involves.

Care team and advance care planning close it. A patient can enter at any point and still land somewhere that makes sense.

Producing patient education video as a pathway rather than a set of one-offs is what lets a health system add the next piece without starting over.

Hereditary cancer risk and genetic testing
Cancer interception through risk assessment and molecular screening
Localized kidney cancer: surgery, ablation, active surveillance
Robot-assisted surgery, pre-op through recovery
The multidisciplinary care team, role by role
Advance care planning after a serious diagnosis

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Shifting tone without breaking the series

Register changes across the arc. The interception and hereditary pieces are forward-looking and practical, built around a questionnaire and a plan. The surgery video is procedural, because a patient facing an operation wants to know what will happen to them and in what order.

The care team video is the most information-dense of the six. It names uroradiologists, uropathologists, urologic oncologists, medical and radiation oncologists, interventional radiologists, oncology nurses and physician assistants, and it has to make that legible without turning into an org chart.

What holds it together is the visual system rather than the tone. Same character design, same colour language, same pacing, so a patient who watched the prevention video recognises the care team video as part of the same thing.

Forward-looking and practical for prevention and risk
Procedural and sequenced for surgery
Role by role, without becoming an org chart, for the care team
One character and colour system across all six

The advance care planning video

This was the hardest piece in the set and it was treated as its own problem rather than as the last episode.

The approach was to frame advance care planning as practical work rather than as a subject to brace for. The video defines the process as four things a person does: reflect on what matters to them, learn what the treatment options are, identify a support team, and name a healthcare representative who can decide on their behalf if they cannot.

From there it stays concrete. Talk with a clinician or a palliative care specialist. Designate the representative. Put the preferences in writing. Share them with family and the care team. Nothing in the piece asks the viewer to contemplate mortality in the abstract, because that is not what the video is for. It is there to help someone finish a task that is easy to postpone.

Framed as practical steps rather than as a difficult topic
Clinical language kept to what a patient actually needs
The healthcare representative decision made concrete
No visual cues that dramatise the subject

Where this patient education video model works best

This model suits health systems and service lines that need to explain a journey rather than a single procedure. Oncology is the clearest case, but the same structure fits cardiology, transplant, maternity, and any pathway a patient moves through in stages over months.

It works because the videos are useful separately and stronger together. The same production approach runs through our healthcare animation and, where the subject turns technical, our medical animation.