As the leader of the product team, Irene was the one who pitched for this project to be added to the Elsevier roadmap, and then to oversee its delivery. Irene Walsh is Director of Product, Design & Content at 3D4Medical from Elsevier. This project has been the focus of a dedicated team of experts who have battled technical and anatomical challenges to bring this idea to fruition. The female anatomy is often only considered important in terms of the reproductive organs, with diagrams showing women in the lithotomy, or childbirth, position.Įlsevier’s complete 3D female anatomy model stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the male figure for the very first time, taking a giant step towards tackling the unconscious bias that exists across the medical profession. Relying on the male anatomy to form the basis of our medical understanding of all people is fundamentally flawed, and yet even today, anatomy textbooks focus primarily on the male body. Did you know, for example, that in the UK, Black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth? This systemic, often unconscious bias continues today, with far-reaching implications for the medical diagnosis and treatment of women, ethnic minorities, transgender and non-binary communities. Female and non-European bodies were considered only in terms of how they were different from the male rather than being represented in their own right. Watch a video about the full female modelīased in Dublin, Ireland, Elsevier’s 3D4Medical team has spent years creating the world’s most advanced 3D female anatomy model, which they recently released through Elsevier’s Complete Anatomy app.įor centuries, the study of anatomy was largely limited to the male, often European form.
Here, we introduce the team that conceived and delivered this breakthrough and show how it can help more than 1 million health educators and medical professionals worldwide.
The female model provides far more insight into the workings of human anatomy and creates greater parity in our understanding of female and male bodies. Now, Elsevier Health has brought the first complete 3D representation of the female anatomy to life. For too long, anatomical models have focused on the male body.