A group of Ball State University professors worked with members from Ball Memorial Hospital and TelePlex Communications Inc. to create a series of short videos on diabetes that will air in the hospital's waiting rooms.
Family Medicine Clinic representative Jenni Flanagan said the clinic wanted to take advantage of the time patients spend waiting by informing them on important topics.
"We have quite a few patients with diabetes, and it is such a complex disease we wanted to offer new ways for people to be informed," Flanagan said. "We want people to be more in charge of the disease."
Dave Marini, associate professor of health science, said Ball State's health science department has had a relationship with the Family Medicine Clinic for a while, and the groups were helping each other and using Ball State's strengths to produce the videos.
"We wanted to do something that involves the community and has a real impact on the community," Marini said.
Marini said patients with the disease should see themselves as part of a team, and the videos encouraged that.
"Patients' behavior is a key factor in treating diabetes," Marini said. "Patients need to know that they can make a difference with their behavior."
The team is in the process of editing eight videos that are each five to eight minutes long, Flanagan said.
She said the videos were meant to inform and empower patients and encourage them to communicate with their physicians.
Each video will center on a certain topic dealing with diabetes, such as explaining the disease, the importance of food and maintaining a diet, exercise and warning signs of the disease, Flanagan said.
Assistant professor of theatre Dwandra Lampkin will be in the videos portraying a person with diabetes, Flanagan said.
The videos are short and geared toward patients with diabetes and family members, but anyone would be able to watch them in the waiting rooms to be informed, she said.
Flanagan said the team worked on the videos this summer and the process is still going on.
The videos should be completed by the end of November, she said.
The team also hopes to do research in January to figure out how effective the videos are, Flanagan said.
The Ball State University Digital Exchange, which is part of the Center for Media Design, funded the project, Marini said.
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