Physician business owners launch digital animation company

Not since the days of Guttenberg has movable type made such advances. Two Wayne State University physicians are using technological innovations to transform text into movable pictures through their newly formed company, E-Chieve BioMedia.

Both emergency medicine research fellows, Ashok Subramanian and Christopher Lipinski are physicians, scientists, computer handymen, and entrepreneurs who design digital animation and interactive multimedia tools for the fields of science, medicine and biotechnology.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, and animation is made of a thousand pictures, then animation is worth a million words,” said Dr. Subramanian. “We are taking complex biological processes and explaining them in 15-second videos, instead of 200 pages of text.”

With science growing at such rapid rates, the volume and quality of scientific data is immense. According to Drs. Subramanian and Lipinski, the written word is no longer strong enough to carry all that data. Video, however, can revolutionize the way people receive information about genetic advances and complicated biological processes.

They are marketing their services to pharmaceutical companies in order to provide simpler, digital explanations of newly patented compounds, medications and concepts. “Currently, doctors get big stacks of reading materials, which are very difficult to get through. In the future, researchers can use CD-ROMs, which allow them to interact with the programs and make better sense of the information,” said Dr. Lipinski.

E-Chieve Multimedia was incorporated in early 1998. The company has managed such diverse projects as training videos for Medflight rescue crews, educational presentations about lead poisoning, web site design and software programming for a CD-ROM wedding planner. In 1999, the company changed its focus to biomedia and biotechnology, which the business owners feel will benefit greatly from the use of their digital expertise.

Dr. Subramanian, 31, is founder and chief executive officer of E-Chieve BioMedia. Dr. Lipinski, 30, is the company’s director of research and development. Both Drs. Subramanian and Lipinski are emergency medicine physicians at Detroit Receiving Hospital and they study brain ischemia and cerebral injury as WSU research fellows.

“This company really combines all our passions, allowing us to be researchers, physicians, scientists, graphic designers and computer engineers,” said Dr. Lipinski. “We think E-Chieve BioMedia could help revolutionize medical education, information dissemination, and scientific promotion.