About Us

✍🏻 - Vipul Navadiya (MD)

(5 minute read)

Short Version

Translating Medical Literature into Animation Videos

The medical literature is vast and full of complicated concepts. Learning such concepts just with written texts and static diagrams is not only difficult and slow but also boring. Everything in our body is full of life and I think that learning about it should also be full of life. Nonstop Neuron is my attempt to make that happen. Here we go beyond lifeless diagrams and bring medical concepts to life with animations. Things are much easy to understand when you see them happening right in front of you. My goal is to translate entire medical literature into animation videos to make the medical education as easy and fun as watching cartoons.

Entire Story

The Past: Creating Videos That I Wanted to See

It all started in 2011 when I was in my final year of MBBS. In the final year, we study Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics. The rest of the subjects were fine but medicine bothered me the most. Whenever I read any topic from medicine, I would realize that I do not remember enough physiology, pathology and pharmacology back from 1st and 2nd years of MBBS to properly understand the concepts of medicine. So I needed to go back to those subjects to read relevant topics. This happened again and again. A similar thing happened for Surgery too. For that, I needed to go back to anatomy over and over. Eventually, I got irritated. I started thinking "I have already studied foundation subjects very well, then why can't I recall most of the concepts! Why do I need to go back again and again!". With those questions came another question that was going to change the course of my life "Was there any flaw in how I studied those subjects?". To find out the answer I started reading about how our brain learns and what is the best way of studying. Amongst many methods, learning with audio-visuals excited me the most. So I tried to learn with audio-visuals. I started referring to atlases more and more. I would search the internet to find animation videos before reading a topic from the book. But, doing this for a while surfaced another problem. Most of the animation videos on the internet are for the general population. They don't go into enough detail as required for medical students. And those covering required details, are not animated i.e. whiteboard lecture videos. Although I referred to such lectures extensively for my learning, I kept looking for animation videos tailored for medical students. The final year passed and my internship was also about to be complete, but I couldn't find such source. Gradually I started thinking of doing it myself: Creating animation videos for medical students. I am kind of artistic since childhood. I like drawing, creating things, fixing broken things, etc. Lego bricks have always been among my favorite toys. Thus creating animations was already close to my area of interest. So I decided that after completion of my MBBS I will give it a try. I will learn basic animation and make a few videos. And if I liked the work, I will make my career in academics and my goal would be to convert the entire medical literature into easy-to-learn animation videos. Turned out I enjoyed creating videos. So I decided to pursue this course. And this is how it all started.

The Present: Hustle to Make it Big

Fast forward to the present: after MBBS, I did MD in Pharmacology, worked as a medical reviewer in a pharmacovigilance company, and as faculty in a medical college. Parallel to these, I did extensive reading on how to learn and how to teach. I learned more about animation as I created more and more videos and the video library kept growing. Thus far I was working on this project part-time. But considering the vastness of the field, part-time was not enough. So I quit my job and started pursuing this project full-time. I also tried to build a team of doctors and animation artists to speed up the video production. But it didn't work out the way I wanted. It took me a few months to overcome this failure but I could not give up on this project. So I continued working on my own hoping that I will get support along the way. My current focus is mainly on Physiology. As physiology is one of the foundation subjects, I decided to complete it first. I am regularly uploading videos on YouTube and notes on this website. Apart from that I also share lightweight informative posts on Instagram from time to time.

The Future: is Together

Obviously, I want to cover as many subjects as I can. But the thing is, creating animations takes a lot of time, effort, and money, and yet I want to keep the animation library free. You see, it's not a sustainable model, and I cannot keep making animations indefinitely unless they are successful. That's why the future depends on you too. Yes, I am happy and grateful for all the support that I am already getting from my viewers. But we have a long way to go. So if you don't like my content tell me on my face and suggest how to improve it. But if you believe in what I am doing and genuinely like my work, I request you to support me actively. Share the videos and spread the word about this website to all your friends and colleagues. Each act of support is appreciated and so much needed. Thanks for Reading.