Stanford University School of Medicine
Print and Digital Publishing: Single or Special Issue
Bronze
In the middle of 2023, the general public was buzzing about artificial intelligence and Stanford Medicine was launching an initiative to support its responsible use in medicine. The time was right for Stanford Medicine magazine to publish a special report on AI for our fall issue. “AI explodes: Taking the pulse of artificial intelligence in medicine” is a 56-page magazine offering insight into the ways AI is being used at Stanford Medicine. The issue includes eight articles on AI, one of which is a roundup highlighting an additional 10 projects, and a glossary of AI terms produced with the guidance of Stanford AI experts.
The magazine was published online and in print by Stanford Medicine’s Office of Communications to contribute to the public discourse on biomedical issues and to build awareness of the innovative research, clinical care and education initiatives being advanced at Stanford Medicine. We aim to reach a broad audience through the magazine, including the Stanford Medicine community, general public, donors and health and medicine opinion leaders.
What was the most impactful part of your entry?
The issue as a whole has become the go-to resource highlighting Stanford Medicine’s AI initiatives. As AI in health is an institutional priority, our Stanford Medicine leaders requested increased distribution of both digital and print editions. The larger print run enabled distribution at AI/health conferences and meetings with prospective partners and donors as well as expanding our circulation for this issue to a wider swath of science journalists and Stanford alumni.
One highly impactful part of the entry is the essay, “Who’s training whom?: A physician’s surprising encounter with ChatGPT,” which has had an impact far beyond the readers of the magazine. While planning the issue, the magazine’s editor invited a faculty member who’s a physician-scientist with professional software development experience and graduate training in computer science to write about how he imagines AI will affect the practice of medicine. He took that prompt and wrote about his experience using ChatGPT.
The essay caught the attention of many physicians and patients who reached out to him after the essay was published online, expressing that it spoke to them in terms of what they wanted, hoped, and expected the future of medical practice and counseling could be. This included the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine AI, who invited him to submit an updated version of the essay for publication. He has also featured the essay in many invited keynote presentations, which often elicit spontaneous applause when he tells the story.
The article had more than 8,000 views on the magazine’s website and 35,722 impressions and 454 engagements on our institutional LinkedIn channel.
What challenge did you overcome?
We wanted to avoid trite, overused or alarming imagery representing artificial intelligence — not an easy task. And we wanted the appearance to convey the exciting potential of the technology without hyping it. For the cover and lead story we commissioned an illustrator who excels at dynamic, playful imagery. He came through with vibrant illustrations expressing the “AI boom” in medicine. These images were also used by the fundraising team to promote their 2024 Frontiers in Medicine event, Stanford Medicine’s Office of Medical Center Development’s premier invitation-only event showcasing Stanford Medicine advances.
For the other images and photos, our team worked with illustrators to avoid redundancy and to keep the concepts fresh. The photography highlighted the medical side of the work to show the variety of ways AI can be used in medicine.
For the text, the art directors researched a type font for the print issue that would be distinctive in style and boldness to address the editorial content of artificial intelligence. That font, called Dinosaur, was applied to all the stories connected to the themed section, thus giving a special look to the issue that helped it to stand out from others in the past. That look gave the issue an energy with its usage on headlines and pull quotes. The use of color played off the cover art.
Contact:
Alison Peterson
alison.peterson@stanford.edu