When Colorado-based freelance health and science journalist Lisa Marshall got a tip from an editor at WebMD to look into smart bandages — gadgets that incorporate sensors and/or artificial intelligence technology to monitor a wound as it heals — she said she had no idea the market for wound care was so large.
Her Sept. 6 story for WebMD and Medscape, “New AI-Enhanced Bandages Poised to Transform Wound Treatment,” offers an interesting look into several types of these devices that could soon be available as well as the wide scope of patients who could potentially benefit from them.
Here, Marshall talks with AHCJ about how she reported the story and how other journalists can make technology stories accessible to lay readers.
Responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What interested you in this story?
I do a lot of work for WebMD. They’re actually one of my favorite clients, because they really encourage their writers to dig in and nerd out on the science. My editor actually suggested this story, because she had been seeing a ton of studies coming out related to new bandage technologies and she asked me to look into it. To be honest, I wasn’t initially that excited about it, because I didn’t really understand the applications. But once I started to realize who they could help, it became a much more interesting story to me.
How did you find the sources you interviewed?
My editor sent me a couple of links to studies, but I usually go straight to EurekAlert! (the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s site for science news releases) and start looking around. I spent a lot of time on there just seeing who was doing research in this area. Then, with every story I write, I always try to find a real person who is going to benefit. But this was such a sensitive subject that I had a really hard time finding someone. I tried really hard to get a person who actually had experienced chronic wounds. I went on Facebook pages and I just kept striking out, so the second best thing was to find a clinician who worked with those people. I did find someone from a wound clinic. She was great because at least she could talk about who will benefit from these bandages.
In your article, you described several prototypes of smart bandages using simple descriptions. Did your sources help you translate the science into lay language?
The sources helped me break it down for sure. I also found a couple of review papers, which were really helpful in taking a kind of big picture of the topic and getting it translated in lay language. They explained how a wound is supposed to heal, and described the process — we made a cool graphic out of that — but also explained how these different technologies work.
What was important to you in telling this story?
So often when I write about whiz-bang new medical technology, which I tend to do a lot, it’s really expensive and inaccessible. I’ve done a lot of work around Alzheimer’s research and, unfortunately, some of the most promising therapies are completely unaffordable for a lot of people. Right now, I’m working on a piece about obesity, and a lot of these really promising obesity drugs are really unaffordable, or they’re not covered [by insurance]. [So] much technology serves a very small, wealthy sector of the population. I really started to like this bandage story when I realized that some of these are super cheap to manufacture and they can benefit people who are housing insecure, people who live in developing countries, and others; and they could be ready to go in a couple of years. This isn’t pie in the sky, maybe it’ll happen in a decade. This could happen now.
What was most interesting to you that you learned during reporting this story?
I had absolutely no idea that chronic wounds were such a horrible health condition, and that people were losing their limbs over these. I just didn’t even know it was a thing. That kind of blew my mind. Talking to these clinicians and hearing about how these wounds don’t heal and how they affect people’s lives, that was very eye-opening to learn that this was such a huge problem. I’ve been writing about health and medical science for 30 years and I haven’t run across this much. I felt like it was a story that doesn’t get told very often.
What advice do you have for other reporters covering new technologies?
Always find the human element. It can be challenging when you’re writing about really nerdy tech stuff to find the, “Why do I care?” human element, but I think it helps if you can. If you can’t find an actual person or a patient who’s going to benefit, the next best thing with medical stories is to at least talk to clinicians who can share anecdotes about how people will benefit.
