best fonts for medical presentations

Medical presentation tip #3: Use the right font

Your choice of font can make the difference between clear, professional-looking slides and unreadable, amateurish slides. It’s that important. Everyone knows you shouldn’t use something like Curlz , and most people are now aware of the cheapening effect Comic Sans has on any text. But there are more subtle font features you should consider, some of which may affect the audience’s impression of your presentation at a subconscious level. 

Two things are critical: the style of the font and the size of the font. When making slides, many people scroll through the list of fonts and pick one that looks pretty, attention-getting, or unique. Then they adjust the size of the font so that all the text they want to put on a slide will fit. Let’s take a look at how to do this in a more thoughtful way.

Font style

Pretty or unique fonts can undermine the credibility of your presentation and make words illegible. Basic, clean, almost-boring fonts will allow your words to shine through.

What not to do

Here are some examples of fonts that will make a medical presentation seem less authoritative and professional:

Same thing goes for fonts that are complicated. Even fonts that seem to look professional may have too much going on or have letters that are spaced too closely together. Here are some examples of fonts that give a crowded, less-than-legible look to your text:

Notice that most of these fonts have serifs (those little extra lines at the top and bottom of letters).  Generally, serif fonts are good for reading text in a book or other document. For medical presentations, though, most of the best fonts are sans serif.

Finally, just on principle, don’t use Times New Roman or Arial . Times New Roman is way overused, to the point where it looks boring. And Arial – well, I just hate Arial. It makes me a little sick inside.

How to do it right

So what font style should you choose? Find one that is simple in its design and shows up clearly on the big screen. Sans serif fonts are best. The design should not draw attention to itself at all but should be almost invisible – it should allow your words to be the main attraction.

Some good fonts for medical presentations include:

Yeah, I know. It’s a much shorter list. Bad fonts outnumber good ones by, oh, 100 to 1. If you really must use a serif font, Calisto works fairly well. Garamond does not; it has a rather wimpy look.

A common mistake is to adjust the size of the font to the text on your slide. This can lead to very small fonts that are not readable from the back (or even the front) of the room. In general, your font should be at least 28 pt (or at the very least, 24). Anything smaller, and your words will be illegible.

Here’s an example of a slide with fonts that are way too small:

The text size should be at least 28 pt (it is 20 on the above slide). Sometimes you may be able to get away with 24 pt, depending on the particular font (some are just designed larger than others).

Also, keep the font size consistent throughout the presentation. Use the same size font for your bulleted text on each slide (again: 28 or 32 is best). Your title can (and should) be bigger, and it should also remain the same from slide to slide. Too much variation, either throughout the presentation or within one slide, is distracting.

Bottom line: Basic, 28 pt, sans serif fonts are best.

Share this:

More pathology.

This is academically inspiring, many thanks for sharing.

Very informative Many presentations are fancy ,distracting n confusing owing to incorrect font

True. At times I rather see the presenter than the words in the presentation because of too much distraction

What about comic sans?

Nooooo!!!!! Very bad!!!

Fonts have a purpose, they’re not about “taste”.

The main thing that comes to mind when people use lot’s of distracting fonts (I’m looking at you comic sans) and colors (I’m looking at you bright green background with yellow text) is that they have no relevant information to show and are hiding that fact (trying to anyway) behind all those useless fonts and colorful backgrounds.

If you have nothing interesting or new to say, don’t present. Value your time and everyone else’s.

Few more tips:

Respect your audience. If you’re going to present in a dark room, stay away from using bright colors in your presentation. If you don’t know where you’re going to present, ask.

Yes, we know you think everything in your presentation is important and must be highlighted, bold, shown in neon pink or all three BUT, when you highlight everything, you’re showing us that you’re missing the point of highlighting.

“Less but better.” -Dieter Rams (look him up).

It has been worked great for me I have used in some of our Medicative websites and have got good response as well

What about Times New Roman?

No!! Times New Roman is okay (just barely) for written text. But it is too cluttered for presentations!

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I need to study:

Other stuff to do.

• Solve unknown cases
• Check out the most common problems in pathology
• Read other students’ questions
• Learn how to give a presentation

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55+ Free Medical Fonts For Designing

There are several important factors that need to be focused on when designing your documents. When it comes to educational and formal projects, you must choose a font that appears decent, attracts the reader’s attention and makes your overall writing look appealing. To help our readers in this regard, we have thoroughly researched and reviewed the best 55 medical fonts to be considered for your upcoming projects.

In this article, we’ll be showing you to the medically-related fonts, for example, ECG saji which is simply a great medical font . These fonts look great on any website that is focused on medically based or a hospital presentation. On this page are 50 medical font types that can engage your audience in a medically inspired tone.

More importantly, before you use any of these medical fonts, ensure that you read through the license documentation. Although they are all for free, it is clearly stated that some of them should not be used in commercial projects. Have you checked our medical website templates for your next project.

Free Fonts for medical logos & Websites

Other than that, these 50 medical fonts are all yours; waiting to be used on your websites according to your design requirements. Also try to use font pairing tools to find suitable fonts.

Healthcare font – ECG saji

ECG saji is a unique medical font which lets you write similar to a ECG design pattern. Founded in 2007, the font has been downloaded more than 9662 times online.

Qanelas Soft Font

Qanelas Soft font in an ideal choice for showcasing your content in a clear way. As it is best suitable for capitalizing headlines, you can now make your titles and headings look attractive than before.

Considered as the best available commercial use fonts, PoiretFont has always been the first choice for business and brand advertisement agencies.

Flatline Medical Font

Its really nice font which is related to medical profession

If you are in search of a deadly and vampire style font to make your headings full of horror, Blood Lust is certainly the best option to be selected as it is mostly used in Horror and Scary category of font listing.

Duepuntozero

Duepuntezero is an elegant yet decent way of designing headlines and logos. As this font is absolutely free for noncommercial uses, you can find no better way to make your titles bold and attractive.

Fonce Sans is a classic sans serif typeface font which features amazing design patterns. Including various styles such as hanging numbers, different English and Non-English lettering, you can now find new punctuation and symbols as well.

This font is best recommended for all type of graphic design layouts. Including motion, web and print graphics, the font is perfect for designing t-shirts, logos and pictograms professionally.

If you are in search of a good looking, simple and decent font type featuring a huge variety of symbols and characters, Comfortaa is certainly the best option to be considered.

Anatomy Fonts

Cute collection of surgical tools used in this font face. Looks really good for presenations.

Gentona Font

Gentona Font is one of its kind medical font which can be used for any writing document. As it gives you a new way to express the headings and titles, the font is available in three styles.

Lora font is the best available option for people who have interest in callography. As it is absolutely free and can be used in multiple styles known as regular, bold, bold italic and italic, you can now design beautiful and attractive headings without any hassle.

Being a contemporary medical font, true italics and design patterns make this one decent design pattern to be chosen for your documents. Moreover, you can also fill the letters with any color of your choice to make it elegant.

Jura Elegant Medical Font

If you are in search of a remarkable yet elegant medical font to complete your academic or professional documents, Jura is characterized by distinguished details and narrow proportions to male the end product decent.

Gothvetica Free Font

Inspired from traditional calligraphy design, Fenix is a best fit for both body copy and display text. Moreover, the font is absolutely free for both commercial and personal usage.

CornerStone Caps Type Font

Available in an all regular and caps type font, Corner stone gives your content a clean and modern style. Furthermore, you can also customize the text with any color or size of your choice.

Andis Font – Fonts for medical logos

People who are finding a thin yet elegant piece of medical font to craft their educational documents, Andis Font is obviously the best option to be considered.

September Medical Font

The September Medical Font gives you a distinctive geometric design pattern which is originally inspired from the clean lines of blueprints and architectural drawings.

Coves Fonts

Being absolutely perfect for headings and titles, Coves can also be considered for showcasing important numbers or words in your document.

 Big John / Slim Joe Fonts

Simple yet beautiful, Inico is best recommended for marketing related projects which require attractive graphics, motions and pictures.

Egg Presentation Font

Egg Presentation Font  is a vintage and bold font which features stylish flourishes, round edges of words and alternate characters which make it easier to make the content interesting to read.

Elixia Font

Launched for both commercial and personal use as it is available free of cost. Whether you need to write in regular or printed style, you can now chose a variety of designs in websites presentations.

Simple, unique and decent, Rai is a font which is based on the logo of Hasbro’s latter-era known as “Generation One” Transformers series.

Quizma Thin Font

Quizma is a demo character version which can be downloaded from its official website if you need to implement different styles or sizes in your document.

Known as a versatile Open Type font for Web, print and screen layouts, FV Almelo is certainly the best choice if you are determined to make your content appreciable.

Leoscar Fonts

Leoscar Fonts is based on double character design and makes your titles and headings clear. Featuring unique design patterns, the font is genuinely created to implement in an award-winning project.

In order to create logos or text-based images of high quality and multiple design patterns, Aller Inline can surely give you a wide range of styles to choose from.

Being a script typeface with beautiful and wide range of alternatives, you can customize the Bellico font through OpenType features for all types of creative assignments.

Alcubierre Medical Font

Alcubierre Medical Fontcomprises of different colors, styles and is mostly used to design headings for books, photographic albums and digital signboards.

Oranienbaum Font

The Oranienbaum Font gives you content a strong and bold visual impact. This font is generally best suitable for magazines, newspapers, designing of brand logos and marketing projects as there are different colors to select from.

Qardoos Font

Qardoos, created by Tama Putra and its absolutely free. Best recommended for creative titles and headings, you can now make gain readers interest within no time.

Free Bariol Font

Best suitable for headings, titles and tags because of its simplicity and elegance.

Based on a brush design pattern, Lines is a unique and stylish way to create logos, prints, quotes, labels and signatures. Furthermore, this can also be considered as a useful medical font to create bold headlines and titles.

Arcadia Font

Arcadia font is ideal for writing short text passages and headlines in a decent manner. Furthermore, its basic shape leads to legibility and makes it easier for the readers to comprehend the text.

Simplifica is an innocent and decent typeface which is similar in design to that of a child like handwriting.

Ikaros Font

Ikaros is a bold web medical font which creates a traditional typeface with interesting designs.

If you are finding an exciting font to enhance the creativity of your document, Moon Font is a font which is intended for programming. By making clear and attractive contexts, the font makes overall writing interesting.

Ginebra Font

This font is a typeface design which can be used for designing posters, headers or t shirts.

[button-red url=”http://www.yaisalinas.com/Ginebra-Free-Font” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow external noopener noreferrer” position=”left”]Download[/button-red]

 Hapna Mono

Hapna Mono is a good appearing and classical font which is available in regular, bold, italic and small caps style.

SquaretypeB

SquaretypeB is yet another amazing medical font which can be considered to make your titles or headings impressive.

Orkney Font Design

Being a unique font to meet your content designing expectations, Orkney Font Design is a distinctive and memorable pattern which features a bend lend to the left in lowercase letters along with a bend to the right within the uppercase letters.

Free Fenton Font

Fentonis a simple script font featuring wide character support.

Aileron Font

Aileron Font is a carefully designed font which is based on fine antique tradition.

Rambla font is a striking and bold design pattern which is best recommended for headlines.

Odin Rounded Font

Including more than 37 terminal and 70 ligature forms, Odin Rounded is absolutely one of its kind font to be considered.

Brice Sketch Font

Based on a distinctive design pattern, users need to begin each word with a capital letter and end each word with the symbol ^.

Soraya Font

Soraya is half sans serif font which is only available in Illustrator AI format to be used in writing.

Last but not least, our list for the best free 50 medical fonts end with Jaden Font. It is a free font which can be used for all types of graphic design, web designing and motion graphics.

Parallello Font

Parallello Font is a simple, decent and elegant font which can be used for creating educational documents and informational articles.

This font lets you to express half serifs font and is marked by a bent to enhance the overall outlook of your content.

Extravaganzza

Extravaganza is a unique and attractive font type which is available in both Regular and Bold formats.

Chunk Slat Serif Typeface

Chunk font is a based on slat serif typeface. The design is inherited from the reminiscent of old American broadsides, wood cuts and newspaper headlines. As it is mainly used for display purposes, Chunk can prove to be the best available font for titles and headlines.

We hope you can now find the best suitable medical font after reviewing our list above. Each medical font is selected after proper research and evaluation so that it can be used to enhance the design, creativity and outlook of your content.

I am a B.Tech graduate in Computer Science and Engineering (2008-2012) from APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University. With a passion for writing, I specialize in blogging and web content creation. I possess strong skills in crafting engaging and informative content, catering to various industries and audiences.

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What is the slanted font?

Taking their name from Italian designed calligraphic typefaces, italic fonts are traditionally slanted to stress the importance of certain words or phrases. And because italic fonts have such a long history, type designers have created a range of stunning options.

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The 33 Best Fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

• BY Bogdan Sandu
• 7 February 2024

Picture this: You’ve crafted the most compelling PowerPoint, your content’s pure gold. But wait, does your font scream snooze fest or radiate confidence?  That’s where I step in .

Slide design  isn’t just about pretty visuals; it’s the fine print too. Think about it, the  legibility ,  typography , and  sans-serif charm  that could make or break your presentation. We’re diving into a world where  Arial  isn’t the alpha, and  Calibri  has companions.

By the end of this deep-dive, you’ll be armed with  examples of the best fonts for PowerPoint presentations . Fonts that won’t just hold your audience’s gaze but glue it to the screen.

From  PowerPoint font styles  to mastering the  visual hierarchy in slides , I’ve got your back. We’re talking  readability , professionalism, and those oh-so-subtle nuances of  typeface selection .

Ready to transform your text from  meh  to  magnificent ? Let’s turn that tide with typeface.

Top Fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

Serif fonts.

Serif fonts are the old souls of typography. They’re classic, elegant, and have a touch of sophistication. Think of them like a fine wine – they just make everything look more refined.

Times New Roman

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The Best 24 Fonts for Modern PowerPoint Presentations [+Guide]

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Presentations are pieces of art. From slide structure to animations, every single detail matters. In this blog post, we will show you the 24 best PowerPoint fonts for all uses. Of course, like everything in design – you might like some and frown at others.

What we can guarantee you is that using this collection of top fonts for PowerPoint will always be a safe bet when you’re in doubt.

Article Overview: 1. How to import a font into your presentation? 2. Great Fonts to Use for your PowerPoint Presentations 3. Great System fonts for PowerPoint Presentations 4. How to design text in PowerPoint?

1. How to import a font into your presentation?

If you don’t know how to import fonts into PowerPoint, it’s important to learn how to do it.

Step 1. Download your fonts

The first step is to select your desired font and download it.

Step 2. Extract the font

Once you’ve downloaded the font, it’s most probably compressed. You need to extract it before installation. If it comes directly as a .otf or .ttf format, there’s no need to unzip.

Step 3. Install the font

Install the font. The process is similar to installing any software, just press “Next” until you see the option “Finish”. If your fonts have been successfully installed, they should appear in the Font library in Windows. To access it, go to your computer, Local Disk (C:)->Windows-> Fonts .

Step 4. Open PowerPoint

Once you open your PowerPoint, the new font should appear among the others.

2. Great Fonts to Use for your PowerPoint Presentations

Fonts are a great way to show some branding skills but also a significant part of your presentation. Of course, we cannot select the best PowerPoint fonts or the best fonts in general, it’s a too subjective matter. But we will try to show you some of the most versatile ones that you will not make a mistake with. Let’s start!

Lato is a very common font that is used in digital forms since it was created for this purpose. It is a sans-serif font that is flexible. One of the most useful things about it is that you can choose between 5 different options for font thickness, giving it extra value when creating PowerPoint presentations.

Recommended title size:  20px

Optimum size for legibility:  18px

Perfect for:  headers and body text

You can combine it with: Roboto, Montserrat, Merriweather

2. Open Sans

Open Sans is another great font that can fit PowerPoint presentations perfectly. Since there is some line spacing, it can be easily readable. If you have large paragraphs that you cannot break down in bullets, it’s your perfect choice. It’s a standard PowerPoint font, so you’ll most probably have it in your font library.

Recommended title size: 28px

Optimum size for legibility:  16px

Perfect for:  body text

You can combine it with: Georgia, Lucida Grande, Publico

Candara is not your everyday font. While you cannot use it in Linux or the web, as it’s proprietary,  it’s accessible in PowerPoint, and what makes it interesting are the curved diagonals, and it’s the curves that give it more “personality”.

Recommended title size: 20px

Optimum size for legibility: 16px

Perfect for: body text

You can combine it with: Calibri, Cambria, Corbel

Specifically designed for Windows 95, Tahoma is a very formal font that can fit business presentations perfectly. It is a very clear and distinctive font which can help avoid confusion, thus it makes it great for formal presentations that need clarity.

Optimum size for legibility: 18px

Perfect for: title headers and body text

You can combine it with:  Georgia, Helvetica Neue, Arial

5. Montserrat

Montserrat is an extremely popular font, as it can be utilized everywhere – from website texts to presentations. Due to its high practicality, you can find it almost anywhere. Well, we need to warn you that you won’t get many “originality” points but you’ll also be “safe” when using it.

Recommended title size: 30px

You can combine it with: Open Sans, Lora, Carla

Whitney is an amazing font that will make your presentation stand out. There are two options – Whitney Condensed and Whitney Narrow. To be honest, Whitney can be used for both headers and body texts (check Discord), but we find it a bit overwhelming for PowerPoint paragraphs.

Recommended title size: 22px

Optimum size for legibility: 15px

Perfect for: title headers

You can combine it with:  Sentinel, Mercury, Gotham

7. Proxima Nova

Proxima Nova is one of the most versatile fonts out there with not 2 but 7 variants! That makes it a viable choice for many purposes and it’s part of the Adobe Fonts collection. The popularity spike is not without a reason, and Proxima Nova certainly won’t disappoint as it is one of the better fonts for PowerPoint.

Recommended title size: 26px

Perfect for: headers and body text

You can combine it with:  Adobe Garamond, Futura, Helvetica Neue

Oswald is a very decent sans-serif typeface and has 3 different versions – light, normal, and bold. It’s an interesting combination of some modern elements combined with classic gothic style, thus it’s perfect for your presentations.

Recommended title size: 18px

You can combine it with: Merriweather, Arial, Roboto

Europa is an amazing font from the Adobe Font Family. It’s a modern geometric sans-serif font that goes well with other fonts from the Adobe family but it can be used in a combination with non-Adobe fonts. It’s up to you.

Recommended title size: 32px

Optimum size for legibility: 20px

Perfect for: headers

You can combine it with:  Adobe Garamond, Chaparral, Kepler

Roboto is one of the most versatile fonts for the web, as it comes with 6 variations. Described as a grotesque sans-serif, it is the default font of Google Maps. Being easy to read makes it great for body texts where scanning is pivotal. While it’s great for small texts, it doesn’t perform that well for titles.

Recommended title size: 38px

Optimum size for legibility: 22px

You can combine it with: Roboto-Slab, Oswald, Abel

Adelle is a slab serif font that is part of the Adobe Family. It’s multipurpose and could work be well utilized and magazines. Its personality and great visibility make it a viable choice on our PowerPoint fonts list. While it can be used for body text too, we prefer to recommend it for headers.

Recommended title size: 36px

You can combine it with: Freight Sans Pro, Proxima Nova, Lucida Grande

14. Lobster

Lobster is a great choice if you want to create some funky text. It’s a great font for posters and headers but ensure you don’t use it much for body text, as it has very poor legibility if written in small letters.

Recommended title size: 58px

Optimum size for legibility: not recommended

You can combine it with: Lato, Open Sans, Muli

Futura is almost a century old but still converts well today! It’s one of the most versatile fonts for PowerPoint in case you download it. Who would suppose a 95-year-old font would still be relevant these days? And you will win points for creativity.

Optimum size for legibility: 17px

You can combine it with: Proxima Nova, New Caledonia, Trade Gothic

Canela is a hybrid font, as it can neither be called serif, nor sans-serif. It’s a very graceful typeface and we find it amazing for title texts. We also loved how it performs in the body from an artistic standpoint. However, we cannot rate it as very suitable for long paragraphs. Still, it can be used in bullets quite well.

You can combine it with: Caslon, Futura, Maison Neue

Aleo is an modern slab serif typeface designed as a “companion” to other popular fonts, like Lato. It has a sleek design but that doesn’t sacrifice readability which matters the most. As it has great clarity, it can be used both as a title text and in the body.

Recommended title size: 25px

Optimum size for legibility: 19px

You can combine it with: Lato, Arimo, Halis Grotesque

18. Poppins

Poppins is a playful sans-serif font that can be used as a main PowerPoint font without any issue. Thanks to its versatility, this PowerPoint font can be used both for title headers and body text, although we prefer the latter.

Recommended title size: 24px

Perfect for: header, body text

You can combine it with: Raleway, Work Sans, New Caledonia

Eras font has 4 weight options in PowerPoint and is absolutely stunning. It won’t be a mistake if we use it as a synonym to “elegance”. It’s slightly italic, thus making it perfect for long paragraphs and web content.

You can combine it with: Garamond, Futura, Helvetica Neue

Lora is a great font that is offered for free by Google. It is a formal font that doesn’t turn its back on art, and as a result, it can be utilized greatly in PowerPoint both as a header and in the body, and it can work perfectly in print, too.

You can combine it with: Lato, Avenir, Montserrat

3. Great System fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

System fonts are a classic choice for PowerPoint presentations as they are a pretty safe bet – you can access them on all types of devices and operating systems. While some of them might not be as beautiful as the previous ones on our list, they will serve you well!

21. Georgia

Georgia is a classic serif font that doesn’t impress with outstanding looks but what makes it a viable choice for PowerPoint presentations is its versatility – you can use it on any type of presentation, as a header or in the body. It’s popular, so you won’t make a mistake using it.

You can combine it with:

22. Times New Roman

Times New Roman was “The Thing” back in time. It was used as a default font for many web browsers and software, thus it was overwhelming. Recently, this serif font has lost its “halo” and is less common but you will never get it wrong if you bring it back to life.

Optimum size for legibility: 12px

You can combine it with: Arial, Gotham, Helvetica Neue

Arial is another well-known name in the web font industry. You can also check this neo-grotesque sans-serif font used in PowerPoint presentations quite often, as it offers a lot of versatility.

You can combine it with: Oswald, Verdana, Georgia

24. Helvetica Neue

Helvetica Neue is the successor of Helvetica which improved legibility and made it more modern. It is one of the most formal fonts that you can use in PowerPoint (and at all). This sans-serif font has 23 different variations in PowerPoint 2022 that you can choose from.

You can combine it with:  Open Sans, Proxima Nova, Adelle

4. How to design text in PowerPoint?

There are certain standards that should be met, in order for your PowerPoint fonts to appear correctly. Let’s see how to order your texts.

1. Make sure the font size is readable

Do you wonder why some websites have HUGE fonts? It’s to ensure their content will be easily scannable. While you don’t have to use a 60px font size for your letters, you should consider making your text more readable.

Pro tip : A simple and straightforward way to achieve this is to try and remove large paragraphs, and replace them with single sentences and bullet points.

2. Make a contrast between the text and background

There is an adopted standard of a minimum 4.5:1 contrast ratio between text and background for content to be scannable, and 3:1 for large text. There are people who have bad eyesight, and others are color blind.

3. Use white space

White space (or negative space) is crucial for your slide design. It is used to separate different parts of the text, making content more readable. It’s crucial to remember that you should leave some “air” after finishing a main point in the slide.

4. Find the right text balance

One of the best PowerPoint presentation practices is to write between 6-8 lines and use no more than 30-35 words. Also, you should try to balance the text evenly – you cannot write 4 lines, then follow them with 3 lines, and then 1. Typically, writing 2-3 lines per paragraph is considered a good move, then followed by white space.

Final words

Structuring your PowerPoint text is not an easy feat. You need to pick the right PowerPoint fonts, as well as follow some basic instructions to make your slide text more scannable for your audience.

If this article has helped you, why don’t you have a look at some other font-related content from GraphicMama:

• 40 Trendy Free Fonts for Commercial Use Today
• Top 20 Free Fonts: Trendy & Evergreen
• 44 of The Best Free Handwriting Fonts to Try in 2022

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Choosing the Best Font for PowerPoint: 10 Tips & Examples

There’s a fine art to creating a great PowerPont presentation that wows. With so many tricks and features in this little bit of software, it’s more likely to see a bad presentation than a good one (and you don’t want to be that person!)

While there are a lot of factors that contribute to the overall design , choosing a suitable font for PowerPoint is near the top of the list. The audience needs to be able to read the words on the screen with ease, to ensure that your presentation is as effective as possible.

So how do you do it? Where do you start when choosing a font for PowerPoint? We have 10 tips for you with a few examples of PowerPoint slides (and templates) that will impress your audience.

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1. Stick to Fairly Standard Fonts

One of the most fun parts of a design project is getting to sift through fonts and make selections that fit your project. When it comes to PowerPoint, that selection should be pretty limited.

To make the most of your presentation, stick to a standard font to ensure that your presentation will look the same everywhere – and on every computer – you present. If you don’t use a standard font, chances are when you pop the presentation in a new machine, you’ll end up with a jumbled mess of lettering. PowerPoint will try to replace all the fonts it does not recognize with something else.

This can cause readability concerns and even make the presentation look like it’s error-filled (with words that are in odd locations or even missing).

10 standard fonts to try:

2. Incorporate Plenty of Contrast

White and black text is easiest to read. But no type is readable without plenty of contrast between the background and text itself.

Regardless of what font you select, without adequate contrast, readability will be a concern. Opt for light type on a dark background or a light background with dark text.

Consider the environment here as well. Do you plan to show the presentation on a computer monitor or big presentation screen? How these conditions render can impact how much contrast your color choices actually have.

3. Use a Serif and a Sans Serif

Most presentations use two fonts.

• Header font for headlines on each slide.
• Copy or bullet font for supporting text.

You don’t have to use the same font in each location. It’s actually preferred to select two different fonts for these areas of the presentation. For even more impact pair two different fonts, such as a serif and sans serif, so that the font change creates an extra level of contrast and visual interest.

4. Avoid All Caps

When picking a font, stay away from fonts that only include capital letter sets. All caps in presentations have the same effect as all caps in an email. It feels like you are yelling at the audience.

All caps can also be difficult to read if there are more than a couple of words on the screen. Use all caps as sparingly as possible.

5. Stay Away From Scripts and Italics

While scripts, handwriting and novelty typefaces might be pretty, they are often difficult to read. Avoid them in PowerPoint presentations. (There’s usually not enough contrast or size to help them maintain readability from a distance.)

The same is true of italics. Anything you do to a font to add emphasis should make it easier to read. While italics can be a great option online or in print applications, presentations come with a different set of rules. The biggest contributing factor is that text often has to be read from a distance – think about audience members in the back of the room – and any slanting can make that more difficult.

6. Make It Big Enough

One of the biggest issues with fonts in slideshows is often size. How big should the text in a PowerPoint presentation be?

While a lot of that depends on the font you decide to use, there are some guidelines. (These sizes work wonderfully with the 10 fonts options in top No. 1. As well.)

• Minimum font size for main copy and bullets: 18 points
• Preferred font size for main copy and bullets: 24 points
• Preferred font size for headers or titles: 36 to 44 points

Make sure to think about the size of the screen and room as well when planning font sizes. With a smaller screen in a larger space, everything will look smaller than it is. The opposite is true of an oversized screen in a small room. Think Outside the Slide has a great font cheat sheets for a number of different screen sizes.

7. Turn Off Animations

Don’t let all those PowerPoint tricks suck you in. Moving text, zooming words, letters that fly in from the side of the screen – they are all difficult to read. And really distracting.

If you want to use an effect, “Appear” is acceptable. But there’s no need to dazzle the audience with crazy font tricks. All this really does is distract people from what you are really trying to say.

The same mantra that we use with all other design projects applies here as well – KISS or Keep It Simple, Stupid.

8. Plan for Sharing

While many users work with PowerPoint regularly, chances are that you’ll be asked to share your presentation slides for others. This includes posting with tools such as SlideShare, emailing the PowerPoint (or putting it in a drop folder) or sharing via Google Slides.

When it comes to fonts, Google Slides is the most complicating factor because it has a different suite of standard fonts than PC or Mac operating systems. Make sure to test the presentation in this environment if you plan to share and use a Google standard font or make sure to include the font you plan to use in the customization options.

9. Think About the Notes, Too

The part of PowerPoint presentations that is often neglected is the notes section. If you plan to distribute a presentation file to the audience (digitally or via printouts), the font selection for accompanying notes is important.

Use the same typeface as for the main slideshow with related corresponding headers and body and bulleted text. The big difference here is size. Body copy/bulleted information should fall in the range of 9 to 12 points and headers should be 18 to 20 points. This is a comfortable reading size for most documents. (These sizes also help ensure clear printing on standard office machines.)

10. Use Fonts Consistently

You don’t need a huge font library to create great PowerPoint presentations. Having a couple of go-to fonts that you use consistently is enough.

Make sure to use fonts consistently within a document as well. Create a PowerPoint template file so that when you use different levels of bulleting and headers, the sizes, color variations, and fonts change automatically. (Web designers, this is just like using H1 through H6 tags.)

A clear consistent use of fonts makes your presentation about how it looks and how easy (or tough) it may be to read and more about the content therein. (And that’s what it should be about.)

If you don’t feel comfortable making your own PowerPoint presentation template, you can download one to get started. These options might have a more refined look than some of the software defaults (and all of the examples in this article come from these collections).

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Presentations > Choosing the Right Font For Your PowerPoint Presentation

Choosing the Right Font For Your PowerPoint Presentation

Whether it’s for a professional conference or middle school book report, it’s important to know the best font to use for your PowerPoint presentation . Believe it or not, fonts are a big part of the overall design of your presentation —and they can make a world of difference! Some convey a lighthearted message, while others can show authority, and so on.

In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at:

• The different styles of fonts
• The 5 most popular fonts
• How to embed fonts, and more.

What are the different styles of fonts? Before we get too deep into each font and what looks best, let’s examine font styles and how they’re classified.

• Sans-serif fonts. Most serif fonts are easy to identify because of the tiny flags or projections on the ends of the characters. Serifs make distinguishing a lowercase L from a capital I in print easy.
• Serif fonts. Sans-serif fonts are commonly used in digital media because serifs can make letters difficult to see if an image or screen is low-resolution.
• Script fonts. Script fonts are also known as handwritten fonts because of the looping letters that make them look like cursive or calligraphy. Most people find it difficult to read more than a few sentences in a script font, so they’re best limited to a few words or a single phrase.
• Monospaced fonts. Even when writing by hand, you’ll notice that not all letters take up the same amount of space. Monospaced fonts buck this trend by allotting the same amount of space laterally for all letters, similar to a typewriter.
• Display fonts. Display fonts can also be known as fantasy or decorative fonts. These aren’t typically used for anything besides signage, banners, logos, or other text that’s isolated. Using display fonts for multiple sentences or a full paragraph isn’t a good practice because they can be hard to read or off-putting after a while.

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What are the 5 most popular fonts in presentations and why? A common theme you’ll notice when looking at the best fonts for PowerPoint is that they’re traditionally sans-serif fonts. Why? Well, this style is much easier to read from a distance and won’t feel cramped if letters are bolded. Additionally, the minimalistic style of sans-serif fonts isn’t distracting from the material or the speaker. Let’s look at five fonts that fit the best practices for a winning presentation .

Note: You’ll notice a serif font on this list, but we’ll address it when we get there.

• Roboto. Roboto is a sans-serif font that’s relatively basic, with sharp edges and rounded loops, counters, and bowls (the rounded parts of letters) without going overly bold or too thin. You can be safe using Roboto for just about any presentation.
• Verdana. Despite the font size you choose, not all fonts display the same. Verdana is a larger sans-serif font that can make it easier to display information without taking your font up an extra size.
• Helvetica. A point of differentiation between Helvetica and other sans-serif fonts is the weight toward the top of the letters. The top of every lowercase letter and the midpoint of every capital letter go to a thick midline’s upper edge. For instance, the top of every lowercase letter reaches the same horizontal point as the top of the crossbar on an H. This unique feature makes the Helvetica type look larger and bolder than it really is, which makes it great for headings and titles.
• Tahoma. Tahoma is different from the previous sans-serif fonts in that it is thinner than the others. While Tahoma might not have the same impact for a heading or title as Helvetica, it’s perfect for body text and fitting into smaller spaces without crowding.
• Palatino Linotype. Serif fonts have long been considered a no-no with digital publications, but with the advent of high-resolution computer monitors, tablets, smartphones, and TVs, they’re fine. What’s more, the serifs on Palatino Linotype aren’t incredibly prominent, so they make for a subtle nod to old-style fonts without over-embellishing.

How do you embed fonts in PowerPoint ? If you’re sharing your presentation with a friend, classmate, or colleague, you could be at risk of the fonts you used transferring properly to their device. For example, if you have a font you love using and installed it onto your computer, they might not have the same font. So, if you send your presentation to them, there could be formatting errors as their device defaults to a different font. Keep this from happening by embedding your font in PowerPoint using these easy steps:

• Click the “File” tab.
• Move down to the lower-lefthand corner of the window and click “Options.”
• Click “Save” on the left side of the screen.
• Scroll down to the section titled “Preserve fidelity when sharing this presentation:”
• Click the box next to “Embed fonts in the file.”
• If you or someone else will be using the presentation on a different device, then select the first option, “Embed only the characters used in the presentation (best for reducing file size).” If you or someone else will be editing the presentation on a different device, then select the second option, “Embed all characters (best for editing by other people).”
• Click “OK.”

There you have it! Choosing the best font for PowerPoint doesn’t have to be difficult. The most important part is making sure that the font is easy to read, and sans-serif fonts are usually a good way to go. By the way, it’s always a good idea to get a second set of eyes on your presentation before your big speech—and be sure to practice it a few times to iron out the kinks !

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25+ Best Fonts for Captivating Presentations

Presentations are a significant business tool utilized across numerous industries. Whether you’re delivering reports to shareholders or pitching innovative ideas to clients, a visually impactful presentation distinguishes you from the crowd. A key aspect of this is, of course, the choice of font. It plays a critical role in communicating your ideas effectively and setting the tone of your discourse.

In this post, we provide a comprehensive list of over 25 best-performing fonts suitable for modern and dynamic presentations. Whether you’re crafting some work in PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides, we’ve got you covered. We feature both free and paid options, allowing for a range of expressive and flexible typographies to match your content and audience.

Express your creativity while maintaining a polished sense of professionalism with our handpicked font selections. Truly dazzle your audience, as you pair your great content with captivating fonts that make your presentations stand out in memorable ways.

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Serif Fonts

Script Fonts

Decorative Fonts

Condensed Fonts

Classic Fonts

Handwritten Fonts

Salmond contemporary typeface.

Salmond Contemporary Typeface is a geometric, modern sans serif font with a distinct minimalist charm due to its tight letterspace. Offering six weights, from Light to Bold, in addition to Oblique styles and multilingual support, this versatile Font family suits various design needs, such as branding, titles, books, UI/UX, and powerful editorial work.

Variera Versatile Font

Variera Versatile Font is a geometric, semi-condensed sans serif typeface characterized by its unique charm and dynamic personality. Available in nine distinct weights, from delicate thin to impactful black, and equipped with matching italics, it’s perfect for head-turning headlines. With its design focused on visual impact, combined with multilingual support and an array of open type features, this versatile font enables captivating and distinctive designs.

Morsa Space Font

Morsa Space Font offers a perfect blend of modernity and futurism with its sleek sans serif design. It’s a versatile tool for creators, boosting the impact of digital designs, craft projects, presentations, and even greeting cards. Morsa infuses your work with an ultramodern vibe that engages viewers, adding a sharp and aesthetic touch to any creative endeavor.

Helena Display Font

Helena Display Font is a broadened sans serif typeface perfect for industry, fashion, and corporate needs. Its strong design makes it ideal for branding activities, from presentation titles and logo design to sign systems. Helena Display Font is not only aesthetic but also practical, adding a professional yet engaging edge to your editorial content.

Phoewage Creative Font

The Phoewage Creative Font is a robust and versatile typeface perfect for descriptions, covers, and various needs requiring similar aesthetic. Ideal for presentations within finance-related companies, its strong character enhances every slide. Moreover, it’s conveniently available in both .OTF and .TTF formats.

Zakesya Elegant Font

The Zakesya Elegant Font is a robust and bold font option, perfect for titles or any text that needs attention-drawing, large fonts. Its versatile design can be used to highlight the title or name of any creative work. Provided in .OTF and .TTF formats, this font does not include pictures. Its usage is only limited by your creativity.

Portlin Modern Display Font

The Portlin Modern Display Font is a versatile typeface designed by Designova, perfect for headlines, branding, logotypes, and graphic design. This adaptable font allows you to manipulate letterspacing for unique presentations and comes with extended language support. With 231 glyphs and four variants—Regular, Italic, Outline, and Outline Italic—it provides a range of options to bring a dynamic feel to your logos and promotional content.

Pulse Rounded Modern Typeface

The Pulse Rounded Modern Typeface, with its minimal yet classic sans serif design, offers a hint of character suitable for both headers and body text. The set comes with a full selection of Latin characters, numbers, special characters, and punctuation. It features ten fonts in OTF format, comprising five weights and five italics. Definitely a versatile choice for a variety of projects.

Quinn Minimal Sans Serif

Quinn is a contemporary, minimalist sans serif font with a subtly rounded design and a delightful character. Its versatility allows use in both headers and body text. Notably, it covers all Latin characters, punctuations, numbers, and special characters. The font family also gives you a broad selection of twelve OTF format fonts, including five weights and italics.

Ethos Nova Minimalist Typeface

Ethos Nova Minimalist Typeface, a neo-geometric sans-serif typeface family, offers 12 fonts, 312 glyphs, and a design that exudes modern elegance. This handcrafted typeface designed by Designova® caters to both Western European & Central European sets, and it is well-suited for an array of applications, from web and print design to branding and marketing graphics. With six weights and corresponding italic versions, Ethos Nova ensures exceptional versatility.

Stage Grotesk Modern Typeface

The Stage Grotesk Modern Typeface is an impeccably-crafted, sans-serif font family that prioritizes readability and simple design. With 14 different fonts including 7 weights and both upright and italic versions, this typeface also offers an impressive set of 618 glyphs for a creative edge. Ideal for web design, logotype projects, and graphic design needs, this typeface is highly versatile with extended language support. Includes OTF, TTF, and Web Fonts in the pack. Designed by Designova.

Augillion Soft Bold Serif

Augillion Soft Bold Serif is a contemporary, bold typeface designed to make your presentations or logos pop. Its unique features include multi-language support, a range of ligatures and alternates for each character, and PUA encoding. With both uppercase and lowercase options – as well as numbers and symbols – its versatility will surely enhance your creative projects.

Soraine Futuristic Font

Explore the cutting-edge with Soraine Futuristic Font. Drawing inspiration from tech visuals seen in logos, sci-fi films and games, Soraine offers a minimalist yet unique style. Its elegant touch and dynamic design make it an excellent choice for a variety of uses, including logos, labels, posters, packaging, and presentations. Use Soraine to give your work a dynamic, future-forward aesthetic.

Cragres Futuristic Typeface

Cragres Futuristic Typeface is a minimalist, technology-inspired font perfect for a multitude of creative purposes. With unique letterforms and an elegant touch, it enhances your design with a dynamic, futuristic feel. Ideal for logos, packaging, books, games, movie titles, and contemporary gadgets, it’s a versatile choice for injecting sleek sophistication into your projects.

Saphira Stylish Typeface

Meet Saphira Stylish Typeface, a bold and elegant font filled with various ligatures and alternates. This versatile font elevates presentations, logos, and wedding invitations with its striking design. It supports multiple languages, extends to both uppercase and lowercase, incorporates numbers and symbols, and is PUA encoded, making Saphira accent-rich and globally adaptable.

Aurelux Modern Luxury Sans

Aurelux Modern Luxury Sans is a contemporary, high-end sans-serif font with a sophisticated and sleek look. It features clean lines and a polished design that make it perfect for luxury brands and various designs. With six different styles, ranging from thin to black available in OTF format, you can utilize Aurelux to elevate and personalize your projects.

Bergen Text Typeface

Bergen Text Typeface is a charming, legible font, crafted for readability especially in small text sizes. Closely related to Bergen Sans, this font family consists of 6 unique fonts. Despite its compact composition, it provides an array of Open Type features, plus extended language support, including Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic, enhancing its professional use immensely.

Carter Layered Typeface

The Carter Layered Typeface, inspired by retro signage, ignites a vintage aesthetic in your projects. This resource provides multiple type layers for a versatile look, extending from Carters Regular to Carters Drop. Its variety of uppercase and lowercase letters along with numerals and punctuations makes it perfect for headlines, logos, signs, or even t-shirts. Transform your designs with the distinctly classic Carter Layered Typeface.

Coffee Morning Sans Font

Coffee Morning Sans Font is more than just an ordinary handmade sans serif type. It embraces its flaws with an imperfect, rough stroke, akin to the strong, bold flavor of morning coffee. Just like your daily coffee ritual, this unique typeface turns imperfectness into a robust and compelling flavor, creating a wonderful start to any project. Enjoy its distinctive taste.

RNS Camelia Elegant Typeface

The RNS Camelia Elegant Typeface is a unique, demi-slab display font family with a distinct, unexpected rhythm due to its reversed strokes. Breathing life into your projects, it draws inspiration from 1920s geometric fonts and 1930s egyptiennes and is designed for use in larger sizes. This versatile font includes 14 weights and styles and comes in otf, woff, woff2, and eot formats.

Austral Sans Stylish Font

The Austral Sans Stylish Font by Antipixel features an artistic, hand-drawn aesthetic and offers a range of textures and styles for a distinctive finish. It offers three weights—Regular, Light, and Thin—each tracing crooked lines and irregular strokes. Also, this versatile font comprises three unique sets of alphabets, both uppercase and lowercase, and includes comprehensive Open-Type features. Ideal for various projects, this font supports a myriad of global languages.

Brinnan Contemporary Font

Brinnan Contemporary Font is a stylish, wide sans-serif typeface perfect for your branding or editorial needs. With its ten varying weights, from an airy Thin to a dense Black, it offers surprising versatility. This dynamic font can adapt to a variety of projects and mediums, making it a flexible option for any designer’s toolkit.

Fonseca Art Deco Font Family

The Fonseca Art Deco Font Family is a refreshingly modern take on early 20th-century typography poster design. With its straight geometric lines and revamped letterforms, this all-caps family is ideal for presenting travel, history, and cultural content in a contemporary style. Headlines, logos, magazines, and packaging projects alike will all benefit from the modernized retro charm that the Fonseca family brings.

Frank Modern Typeface

The Frank Modern Typeface is a classic-inspired font that’s perfect for print, apparel, or poster design. Available in five weight varieties, this set includes normal, oblique and rough styles and supports over 300 unique Latin glyphs. The font files come in .OTF, .TTF, .WOF/.WOF2, and .EOT formats to accommodate various projects. It’s a mix of DIN, Eurostile, and a hint of Futura, for a stunningly versatile appeal.

Marinaio Family Typeface

The Marinaio Family Typeface is a unique, handcrafted design by Valerio Dell’Edera, inspired by rubber-stamping and carving. Its gentle curves and softened edges mimic a vintage, rubber-stamp aesthetic. Its narrow, low-contrast character and range of alternate ligatures make it ideal for business cards, custom stamps, coffee table books, letterheads, invites, and more.

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• Mar 9, 2021

Which Fonts to Use on Your Scientific Poster

Choosing the right font (A.K.A. typeface) for your scientific poster is all about two things: readability and style.

But with thousands of fonts to choose from, it can be overwhelming.

So where do you start? You’ve come to the right place.

Here is what you need to know to choose a clear and stylish font for your scientific poster.

Serif or sans serif?

A serif font is one with those little bits on the end of the characters, the little moustaches. And, like a moustache, those little bits are just for style - they might be cool, but they’re not necessary.

What’s more, a serif font tends to give off a sophisticated, yet dated, vibe. As you want to your poster to reflect the innovative and contemporary research you’re conducting, it’s a good idea to stay away from serif fonts.

You need a font that is without serif, that’s sans serif. We recommend downloading your next favourite Sans Serifs fonts at Creative Fabrica . 👈

How many fonts?

Like so much of good design: less is more.

One or two fonts is all you need. If you have more fonts than this, your poster will look like a ransom note received in the mail.

As you know, it’s a good idea to make the headers clearly visible so help the viewer navigate the poster.

You can do this by making the headings bold or ALL CAPS. If you like the look of all caps, I strongly recommend against using any long headings. Long chucks of all caps is very difficult to read. So keep your headings short.

Decorative fonts

Look, I get it. You found the Disney font and you want to use it on your poster. A decorative font may be tempting, but it’s just not helpful - they’re very rarely easier to read than the standard sans serif fonts available. Take a look below to see what I mean.

Comic Sans?

Comic Sans is a sans serif font, it’s also fun - can we use it on our scientific posters?

Every time a scientist uses Comic Sans a graphic designer dies

BUT there is one exception. That is if your poster IS a comic!

If that’s the case, go for it! In this context Comic Sans is perfect and it would almost be a crime not to use it. Here’s a comic-style graphical abstract that is a perfect partner for the much maligned Comic Sans.

Bigger is better. At Animate Your Science, we believe posters are best served as a visual representation of your abstract. It’s about starting a conversation and that’s it - the rest is up to you.

So a poster with few elements, that can be seen from across the room, is perfect.

For this we recommend the following font sizes as a minimum for your text (based on an A0 size):

Headers : 40

Body text : 36

Your body text should be easily readable from 1 metre away.

To check that you have the right sizes, I suggest zooming in on your poster to 100 %. Then, take a step back to a metre or so. If you can clearly read the body text, then at a minimum, your text is big enough. You can use the same technique to test the sizes of your headers and title too.

Some suitable fonts

You have plenty of fonts to choose from. You’re not even limited to those default fonts installed on your computer. Check out Font Squirrel , Dafont , and 1001freefonts where you can download some new fonts for free.

For some ideas, check out these fonts:

That’s plenty of info dedicated to fonts for your scientific poster, so thanks for hanging in there with me.

But, we’ve only just scratched the surface on what makes a great scientific poster.

To properly cover this topic, we’ve developed a whole online course: How to Design an Award-Winning Scientific Poster. You can learn at your own pace and arm yourself with the tools, templates, skills and knowledge to create your own award-winning scientific posters. We’ve had excellent feedback on the 33 video lessons, 3 hours of learning and 8 templates & downloads included - so we’re confident that you’ll love it too.

Take-Away Points

One or two fonts

Sans serif is your friend

Make it large enough to be easily readable

Dr Tullio Rossi

Dr Flynn Slattery

#scicomm #poster #science

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Choosing medical fonts best typography for medical websites, dr. sean fahimi.

• August 28, 2023 Update

The fonts you use can help or hurt your branding message.

An attractive, well-designed website is the hallmark of any good medical marketing . From the layout of your website to the images you use to the language in your copy, every component of your website serves a purpose.

The first purpose of your website is to serve as the first impression to your patients. Your website is often the first thing people will notice about your practice. An attractive website that’s easy to navigate will tell people that your business is trustworthy and takes pride in what it does. A website that’s frustrating and put together with little thought and strategy will tell people that your medical practice doesn’t take enough pride in what they do and who they serve to invest in quality medical website design .

One component of medical marketing that people don’t think about is the typography used on a website. Think about different products you use and how various brands use a font.

A beer producer is going to use a font that’s edgy and says that it promises a good time. A multi-billion dollar corporation will use a font that communicates that it is strong and capable. And a children’s daycare center might use one that’s colorful and fun. Each brand uses a font and color scheme that communicates its company’s and brand’s essence. A healthcare professional needs to do the same.

What is Brand Essence?

Your brand essence is the heart and soul of your brand. It’s the constant you carry throughout your products or services, how your staff interacts with patients, and what you stand for as a business.

A brand message can be summarized into three words. For example:

“quality, integrity, compassion.”

It’s whatever you want your practice to be known for.

In this article, we’ll discuss:

• What is typography?

Components of Typeface

• The Good vs. Bad
• Best Choices for Typography
• Overall Look Matters
• Typography for Doctors and Dentists

What is Typography?

Typography is the art of arranging type – letters, and characters. How you arrange those letters in website design for medical professionals can send different messages to visitors to your website.

The height, thickness, point size, line length, and spacing all play a role in typography arrangement. People would arrange letters physically in the past, but thanks to today’s computers, open-source fonts, and photo editing tools, arranging typography is much easier.

What’s So Important About Typography?

Typography makes a big impact through little changes. The spacing between letters and the thickness of letters can impact how easy your content is to read on smaller screens. For example, Helvetica Neue was used by Apple before switching to an in-house font. They created a new font that allowed for more breathing room between letters and would ultimately read better on their iPads and iPhones.

As you begin to think about how to integrate typography into website design for healthcare professionals, think about who your audience is. Older people might need a bigger font with more spacing between letters, while younger audiences might enjoy smaller fonts with unique curves.

What’s the difference between fonts and typefaces?

Although font and typeface are used interchangeably, these words actually mean two different things. Typeface refers specifically to what you see in a creative piece, whereas font is the physical collection of letters and characters.

The Impact of Typography on Your Medical Website

Many in the medical profession may make the mistake of thinking the style of their typography should be an “in your face” type style. Consider who will be searching for the website. Usually, it will be prospective patients or possible competitors for your market share. It may be said website design predicates the need for a well-chosen format that indicates the professionals it represents.

Within quality medical website design lies the need to punctuate the content with a legible, easy-to-read font. This is especially important for medical websites that contain technical terminology that may be read by other professionals within the medical community.

Tools of Typography You Should Know

Choose typography that offers optimal white space between alpha and numeric characters so these characters are not misinterpreted. For example, suppose chemical terms that contain superscript or subscript letters or numbers are to be included. In that case, the choice should allow for sufficient leading, kerning, and tracking so these terms do not run together and become misunderstood or difficult to read.

To better understand leading and kerning, it is necessary to know these are adjustments made to space between typed characters in the text.

Leading keeps the spaces between lines of text from being too close together. Kerning controls the space between each character so that alpha letters with “tails” or serifs do not cling to characters located before or after them.

Tracking is another part of typography that’s important to understand because it gives a “finished” look to each line of typed text so that important medical terms are not broken up by hyphens or become “widows” and “orphans.” Widows occur when a word hangs on a separate line with a gap in spacing to the rest of the text. An orphan occurs when a paragraph is separated from the rest of the text and is “orphaned” at the bottom of the page or column.

When it comes to typeface, several components of it should be paid attention to when choosing and arranging it.

The baseline is the line where the letters sit. The cap height is the distance from the baseline to the top of a capital letter. This comes in handy when aligning type. The X height is situated between the baseline and cap height. It’s the height of the lowercase letter.

The bowl is the curved part of the character that encloses the circular or curved part of letters like ‘d’, ‘b’, and ‘o’. After bowls, you have the serif, which is little projections that finish a stroke in a letter. Think about the little “feet” mentioned above. Finally, the defender is the longest point in a letter that ends below the baseline.

Serif Fonts

Serif fonts are fonts that have little feet. This font is easier to read in long, printed works, so it is often used in novels. Common serif fonts include Times New Roman, Georgia, and Garamond. These fonts are easier to read because the letters are quite distinct.

Sans Serif Font

Sans means without in French. Sans serif means without serifs. You’ll notice these feet do not have the little feet as serif fonts do. Arial and Verdana are common sans-serif fonts. These fonts are often used in web documents and on blogs because they read well on low-screen resolutions and appear more modern.

Blackletter

Goth and Old English are common blackletter fonts. These fonts have thick, thin strokes and were used in Gutenberg’s Bible. They were common before 1500, making them typically used today in documents that are meant to appear historic.

These letters are incredibly difficult to read, so it’s typically only in headers or logos when used today. Think of the New York Times logo. This likely isn’t something that will be used in website design for medical professionals.

Script Fonts

These fonts are based on handwriting. Think of the beautiful lettering that goes on a wedding invitation. But they’re so much more than that. Casual scripts also mimic an individual’s daily handwriting, as opposed to penmanship.

Good vs. Bad Typography

Ultimately, implementing the appropriate typography for your medical marketing strategy comes down to selecting one that will meet the needs of your audience and communicate your brand essence.

Test various fonts to see what works best on your website’s desktop version and mobile devices. Consider how the font will appear when printed on business cards, as keeping a consistent use of typography and font will help establish your brand.

Consider the efficacy of the typography. You might find one that seems super cool and edgy but find that it suits neither your website nor your brand essence. Using it could make your website look silly and even turn people away.

Moving to the Best Choices of Typography

Typestyle selection in the medical and other healthcare professions includes those listed below. These are the most recommended by Stanford University for creative, effective marketing and communication, and branding.

Source Sans Pro , a sans serif type that works well with most medical website text. It is easy on the eyes, especially for lengthy medical and technical white papers.

Crimson Text , stylish type for printed medical communications.

Fjord One , consider using this font as an accent, helping to grab website visitors’ attention quickly.

Other Issues to Consider

Keep in mind websites for all types of businesses, including medical websites are always under guidelines of browser capabilities. It is important to note that browsers change font weights according to individual algorithms.

A “font weight” is simply the thickness of the type. The thickness or weight of the typestyle chosen depends on using italics, bold, and other character enhancements.

It’s All About the Look of Website Typography

While it is certainly true medical website content is the central focus of why information is presented, it is also true that typographical enhancements retain or lose interest if the type is not legible.

When individuals search for medical websites, the first glance at the site needs to be stylish and informative. It’s been determined that websites have less than three seconds to grab attention.

Pairing Different Types of Fonts to Get Your Message Across

There are specific places where the viewer should be attracted to a website. Whether it be a tagline or presenting a business name, the use of paired typography will shine through. Here are examples of where this works.

Script and Letter Types

“Women Care” is what the viewer should pay attention to. The script font allows the viewer’s eye to look further.

Mixing Bold and Handwriting

While this website design has asymmetrical components, the viewer is immediately attracted to the bold tagline and the hand-written script supporting the tagline.

Pairing Bold vs. Slim Weights

There are many areas of text noted on this website. However, the designer focuses on the boldness of specific parts of the tagline and leaves less important phrases in a more thin, incognito view.

Color Pairing With Font Types

Though designers may choose the same typeface, one may still differentiate text with the use of color. This example shows a primarily pink color scheme, but the business name is the only blue portion of the view.

Differences in Type for Medical Professionals

The choice of type depends mainly on the particular medical practice. Surgeons, medical specialists, and primary care physicians may prefer a more formal website type. Dentists may choose a less formal type when their practices involve adults and children.

The most important factor in the choice of type is how the target market reacts to it. A medical target market comprises prospective clientele, medical vendors, and competitors. These variations affect the overall impact of the type chosen.

For example, vendors seeking potential doctors and dentists to market supplies and goods may not want to wade through website content with a sans serif type used throughout the content. This is when splitting up type may be advantageous.

Site headlines can be serif type while content beneath the headline is presented in sans serif type. This is also true for medical sites that are marketing specific services or goods. There is more flexibility for professionals who market medical or surgical equipment on websites that can afford the use of up to three types of styles. Be aware that the type chosen will be viewed and judged by competitors.

New vs. Existing Medical Sites

Another issue for consideration is whether the practice is new or existing with a long-standing clientele. First impressions are lasting impressions even for startup medical, dental, and medical professionals.

Choose content focusing on professionalism and type that offers a fresh image for announcing a new medical practice. Existing medical sites may want to use two sets of types for additions to their services to ensure the information is not ignored.

Keep type density at practical levels to avoid tedium. That’s the fastest way to divert site visitors’ attention.

Medical Professionals Websites

Many medical professionals write via a website for medical associations or others in their specific local groups. The typography chosen for this needs to be formal type. However, this is where the type chosen should collaborate with typographical tools like leading, kerning, and tracking for the best medical and technical presentations.

Learn Typography Early

Learning the variances in typography styles early on is valuable in understanding medical and dental website design and effective website content.

It may be a good idea for medical and dental students to present their student documentation in the suggested serif and sans serif type styles to learn how to create stylish medical and dental documents and text that looks professional.

Demographics Affect Type Style

Where a medical professional, medical or dental practice is located also affects type styles. There are several serif and sans-serif types from which to choose. Study those most often seen on medical sites in the local area to arrive at the preferred type used.

Formal types are often used in larger urban areas to attract a more diverse group of prospective patients and medical clients. In rural areas, less formal types suit the needs of this demographic region.

What Message Does Type Choice Send?

The sole purpose of learning the tools of typography and studying the target market and demographics is to send a message that looks professional and a type that offers a professional “tone.”

This points out the compatibility between the type chosen and links to branding. Once a medical brand is announced with the proper type choice, it should have the ability to be retained in memory. There is a definite connection between font choice and increasing online visibility.

Font pairs examples

At the end of the day, good use of quality ty­pog­ra­phy can help your medical website en­gage its visitors, guide them, and ul­ti­mately help convert them into new patients. When in doubt, ask an expert, there are so many fonts and typefaces to choose from, and the experts at O360® know how to help you select them.

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Home » Blog » Design » Best Fonts for Medical Printed Materials

Best Fonts for Medical Printed Materials

Medical printed materials could include pamphlets or booklets about your practice, what you treat, or other services you offer. On the other hand, you could create an information booklet about the causes, treatments, and symptoms of a particular disease.

However, the content of your medical printed material is not the only thing you need to consider. You have to create a well-structured printout that represents your brand well and sends the right message. Believe it or not, the font you use matters!

The wrong font can be difficult to read or even look unprofessional. So what are the best fonts for medical printed materials?

While there are thousands of fonts out there, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best fonts for medical materials. Keep reading to find the best font for your medical printed products!

Stand Out With One of the Best Fonts for Medical Printed Materials!

Verdana was created to address the challenges of on-screen display. In other words, Verdana’s sole purpose is to improve legibility. The generous width and spacing of the letters make it an ideal font for both on-screen and printed materials. For medical printed materials, in particular, Verdana gives both a professional and conversational appearance.

Lora is very similar in appearance to Times New Roman. However, this font differs in its soft curves and larger typeface. All in all, Lora is the perfect font for paragraphs and bulk text. The modern font gives a serious, professional appearance to any printed material.

3. Source Sans Pro

Source Sans Pro is an Adobe original typeface. After years of work and study, Paul D. Hunt developed the modern quality font that is now known as an industry standard. Source Sans Pro will look great in pamphlets or booklets with moderately sized blocks of text. This stylish font will liven up any medical printed materials!

4. Proxima Nova

Proxima Nova is a complete reworking of the original six Proxima Sans fonts from 1994. The resulting font incorporates geometric shapes with humanistic proportions. In the end, this font will complement any printed material with bold colors, sharp lines, and small blocks of text, such as bullet points.

5. Times New Roman

Times New Roman is one of the most well-known typefaces in the world and dates back to 1929. The font is used in nearly all applications on print and web. The font is preferable because it is legible and clear. If you aren’t sure what the best font for your medical printed materials is, Times New Roman is always a great go-to.

6. Rockwell

Rockwell was published in 1934 and was modeled after a 1910 font, Litho Antique. This font has a professional, easy-to-read appearance with a historical touch. With bolder lines than Times New Roman, Rockwell is a classic font that is perfect for headings and small blocks of text.

Avenir was initially published in 1988. However, it’s newer design combines the rich history of the early 20th century with a futuristic vision. Avenir is an eye-catching, font often used in the advertising industry because of its clear readability. Thus, it’s the perfect font to catch a reader’s attention.

8. Comfortaa

Comfortaa is a rounded, geometric typeface that works best with large font sizes. In other words, Comfortaa is ideal for titles, subheadings, and blocks of text that have a large font size. In the end, Comfortaa will add a unique brand to your medical printed materials.

9. Quicksand

Quicksand is based on sans serif fonts that were popular in the 1920s and 1930s. The rounded terminals, similar to that of Avenir, make the font legible and easy to read. With its thin lines and modern geometric shapes, Quicksand is a perfect font for printed materials.

10. News Cycle

News Cycle is modeled after 1908 News Gothic, which was used in some newspapers. This realist-style sans-serif font is designed for clarity and readability. News Cycle looks best in large blocks of text as well as headlines.

Design and Print Your Medical Printed Materials!

In addition to choosing the best fonts for medical materials, you will have to design and format the product.

Here at The Print Authority , you can order custom prints when you need them. Our on-demand printing services provide quality prints at low prices. Additionally, our top of the line graphic designing makes creating professional medical printed materials easy. No matter what product you want to print, chances are, we can do it!

Contact The Print Authority today for more information about printing top tier medical materials!

Research Poster Presentation

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Beginning Graphic Design: Typography

Best Practices

Choose your fonts

For maximum impact, choose different fonts for the header and body of your poster. Select a serif font for your title and a sans serif font for the body. Serif fonts, such as Times New Roman and Garamond, have short lines at the ends of the strokes in a letter (as indicated by the arrows in the images below); sans serif fonts, such as Helvetica and Arial, do not. 

Some common font pairings and recommended font sizes can be found below.

Size appropriately

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Research ethics and artificial intelligence for global health: perspectives from the global forum on bioethics in research

• James Shaw 1 , 13 ,
• Joseph Ali 2 , 3 ,
• Caesar A. Atuire 4 , 5 ,
• Phaik Yeong Cheah 6 ,
• Armando Guio Español 7 ,
• Judy Wawira Gichoya 8 ,
• Adrienne Hunt 9 ,
• Daudi Jjingo 10 ,
• Katherine Littler 9 ,
• Daniela Paolotti 11 &
• Effy Vayena 12  

BMC Medical Ethics volume  25 , Article number:  46 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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The ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health care and public health continues to be an urgent issue for attention in policy, research, and practice. In this paper we report on central themes related to challenges and strategies for promoting ethics in research involving AI in global health, arising from the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR), held in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2022.

The GFBR is an annual meeting organized by the World Health Organization and supported by the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the South African MRC. The forum aims to bring together ethicists, researchers, policymakers, research ethics committee members and other actors to engage with challenges and opportunities specifically related to research ethics. In 2022 the focus of the GFBR was “Ethics of AI in Global Health Research”. The forum consisted of 6 case study presentations, 16 governance presentations, and a series of small group and large group discussions. A total of 87 participants attended the forum from 31 countries around the world, representing disciplines of bioethics, AI, health policy, health professional practice, research funding, and bioinformatics. In this paper, we highlight central insights arising from GFBR 2022.

We describe the significance of four thematic insights arising from the forum: (1) Appropriateness of building AI, (2) Transferability of AI systems, (3) Accountability for AI decision-making and outcomes, and (4) Individual consent. We then describe eight recommendations for governance leaders to enhance the ethical governance of AI in global health research, addressing issues such as AI impact assessments, environmental values, and fair partnerships.

Conclusions

The 2022 Global Forum on Bioethics in Research illustrated several innovations in ethical governance of AI for global health research, as well as several areas in need of urgent attention internationally. This summary is intended to inform international and domestic efforts to strengthen research ethics and support the evolution of governance leadership to meet the demands of AI in global health research.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

The ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in health care and public health continues to be an urgent issue for attention in policy, research, and practice [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Beyond the growing number of AI applications being implemented in health care, capabilities of AI models such as Large Language Models (LLMs) expand the potential reach and significance of AI technologies across health-related fields [ 4 , 5 ]. Discussion about effective, ethical governance of AI technologies has spanned a range of governance approaches, including government regulation, organizational decision-making, professional self-regulation, and research ethics review [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. In this paper, we report on central themes related to challenges and strategies for promoting ethics in research involving AI in global health research, arising from the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR), held in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2022. Although applications of AI for research, health care, and public health are diverse and advancing rapidly, the insights generated at the forum remain highly relevant from a global health perspective. After summarizing important context for work in this domain, we highlight categories of ethical issues emphasized at the forum for attention from a research ethics perspective internationally. We then outline strategies proposed for research, innovation, and governance to support more ethical AI for global health.

In this paper, we adopt the definition of AI systems provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as our starting point. Their definition states that an AI system is “a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. AI systems are designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy” [ 9 ]. The conceptualization of an algorithm as helping to constitute an AI system, along with hardware, other elements of software, and a particular context of use, illustrates the wide variety of ways in which AI can be applied. We have found it useful to differentiate applications of AI in research as those classified as “AI systems for discovery” and “AI systems for intervention”. An AI system for discovery is one that is intended to generate new knowledge, for example in drug discovery or public health research in which researchers are seeking potential targets for intervention, innovation, or further research. An AI system for intervention is one that directly contributes to enacting an intervention in a particular context, for example informing decision-making at the point of care or assisting with accuracy in a surgical procedure.

The mandate of the GFBR is to take a broad view of what constitutes research and its regulation in global health, with special attention to bioethics in Low- and Middle- Income Countries. AI as a group of technologies demands such a broad view. AI development for health occurs in a variety of environments, including universities and academic health sciences centers where research ethics review remains an important element of the governance of science and innovation internationally [ 10 , 11 ]. In these settings, research ethics committees (RECs; also known by different names such as Institutional Review Boards or IRBs) make decisions about the ethical appropriateness of projects proposed by researchers and other institutional members, ultimately determining whether a given project is allowed to proceed on ethical grounds [ 12 ].

However, research involving AI for health also takes place in large corporations and smaller scale start-ups, which in some jurisdictions fall outside the scope of research ethics regulation. In the domain of AI, the question of what constitutes research also becomes blurred. For example, is the development of an algorithm itself considered a part of the research process? Or only when that algorithm is tested under the formal constraints of a systematic research methodology? In this paper we take an inclusive view, in which AI development is included in the definition of research activity and within scope for our inquiry, regardless of the setting in which it takes place. This broad perspective characterizes the approach to “research ethics” we take in this paper, extending beyond the work of RECs to include the ethical analysis of the wide range of activities that constitute research as the generation of new knowledge and intervention in the world.

Ethical governance of AI in global health

The ethical governance of AI for global health has been widely discussed in recent years. The World Health Organization (WHO) released its guidelines on ethics and governance of AI for health in 2021, endorsing a set of six ethical principles and exploring the relevance of those principles through a variety of use cases. The WHO guidelines also provided an overview of AI governance, defining governance as covering “a range of steering and rule-making functions of governments and other decision-makers, including international health agencies, for the achievement of national health policy objectives conducive to universal health coverage.” (p. 81) The report usefully provided a series of recommendations related to governance of seven domains pertaining to AI for health: data, benefit sharing, the private sector, the public sector, regulation, policy observatories/model legislation, and global governance. The report acknowledges that much work is yet to be done to advance international cooperation on AI governance, especially related to prioritizing voices from Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) in global dialogue.

One important point emphasized in the WHO report that reinforces the broader literature on global governance of AI is the distribution of responsibility across a wide range of actors in the AI ecosystem. This is especially important to highlight when focused on research for global health, which is specifically about work that transcends national borders. Alami et al. (2020) discussed the unique risks raised by AI research in global health, ranging from the unavailability of data in many LMICs required to train locally relevant AI models to the capacity of health systems to absorb new AI technologies that demand the use of resources from elsewhere in the system. These observations illustrate the need to identify the unique issues posed by AI research for global health specifically, and the strategies that can be employed by all those implicated in AI governance to promote ethically responsible use of AI in global health research.

RECs and the regulation of research involving AI

RECs represent an important element of the governance of AI for global health research, and thus warrant further commentary as background to our paper. Despite the importance of RECs, foundational questions have been raised about their capabilities to accurately understand and address ethical issues raised by studies involving AI. Rahimzadeh et al. (2023) outlined how RECs in the United States are under-prepared to align with recent federal policy requiring that RECs review data sharing and management plans with attention to the unique ethical issues raised in AI research for health [ 13 ]. Similar research in South Africa identified variability in understanding of existing regulations and ethical issues associated with health-related big data sharing and management among research ethics committee members [ 14 , 15 ]. The effort to address harms accruing to groups or communities as opposed to individuals whose data are included in AI research has also been identified as a unique challenge for RECs [ 16 , 17 ]. Doerr and Meeder (2022) suggested that current regulatory frameworks for research ethics might actually prevent RECs from adequately addressing such issues, as they are deemed out of scope of REC review [ 16 ]. Furthermore, research in the United Kingdom and Canada has suggested that researchers using AI methods for health tend to distinguish between ethical issues and social impact of their research, adopting an overly narrow view of what constitutes ethical issues in their work [ 18 ].

The challenges for RECs in adequately addressing ethical issues in AI research for health care and public health exceed a straightforward survey of ethical considerations. As Ferretti et al. (2021) contend, some capabilities of RECs adequately cover certain issues in AI-based health research, such as the common occurrence of conflicts of interest where researchers who accept funds from commercial technology providers are implicitly incentivized to produce results that align with commercial interests [ 12 ]. However, some features of REC review require reform to adequately meet ethical needs. Ferretti et al. outlined weaknesses of RECs that are longstanding and those that are novel to AI-related projects, proposing a series of directions for development that are regulatory, procedural, and complementary to REC functionality. The work required on a global scale to update the REC function in response to the demands of research involving AI is substantial.

These issues take greater urgency in the context of global health [ 19 ]. Teixeira da Silva (2022) described the global practice of “ethics dumping”, where researchers from high income countries bring ethically contentious practices to RECs in low-income countries as a strategy to gain approval and move projects forward [ 20 ]. Although not yet systematically documented in AI research for health, risk of ethics dumping in AI research is high. Evidence is already emerging of practices of “health data colonialism”, in which AI researchers and developers from large organizations in high-income countries acquire data to build algorithms in LMICs to avoid stricter regulations [ 21 ]. This specific practice is part of a larger collection of practices that characterize health data colonialism, involving the broader exploitation of data and the populations they represent primarily for commercial gain [ 21 , 22 ]. As an additional complication, AI algorithms trained on data from high-income contexts are unlikely to apply in straightforward ways to LMIC settings [ 21 , 23 ]. In the context of global health, there is widespread acknowledgement about the need to not only enhance the knowledge base of REC members about AI-based methods internationally, but to acknowledge the broader shifts required to encourage their capabilities to more fully address these and other ethical issues associated with AI research for health [ 8 ].

Although RECs are an important part of the story of the ethical governance of AI for global health research, they are not the only part. The responsibilities of supra-national entities such as the World Health Organization, national governments, organizational leaders, commercial AI technology providers, health care professionals, and other groups continue to be worked out internationally. In this context of ongoing work, examining issues that demand attention and strategies to address them remains an urgent and valuable task.

The GFBR is an annual meeting organized by the World Health Organization and supported by the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the South African MRC. The forum aims to bring together ethicists, researchers, policymakers, REC members and other actors to engage with challenges and opportunities specifically related to research ethics. Each year the GFBR meeting includes a series of case studies and keynotes presented in plenary format to an audience of approximately 100 people who have applied and been competitively selected to attend, along with small-group breakout discussions to advance thinking on related issues. The specific topic of the forum changes each year, with past topics including ethical issues in research with people living with mental health conditions (2021), genome editing (2019), and biobanking/data sharing (2018). The forum is intended to remain grounded in the practical challenges of engaging in research ethics, with special interest in low resource settings from a global health perspective. A post-meeting fellowship scheme is open to all LMIC participants, providing a unique opportunity to apply for funding to further explore and address the ethical challenges that are identified during the meeting.

In 2022, the focus of the GFBR was “Ethics of AI in Global Health Research”. The forum consisted of 6 case study presentations (both short and long form) reporting on specific initiatives related to research ethics and AI for health, and 16 governance presentations (both short and long form) reporting on actual approaches to governing AI in different country settings. A keynote presentation from Professor Effy Vayena addressed the topic of the broader context for AI ethics in a rapidly evolving field. A total of 87 participants attended the forum from 31 countries around the world, representing disciplines of bioethics, AI, health policy, health professional practice, research funding, and bioinformatics. The 2-day forum addressed a wide range of themes. The conference report provides a detailed overview of each of the specific topics addressed while a policy paper outlines the cross-cutting themes (both documents are available at the GFBR website: https://www.gfbr.global/past-meetings/16th-forum-cape-town-south-africa-29-30-november-2022/ ). As opposed to providing a detailed summary in this paper, we aim to briefly highlight central issues raised, solutions proposed, and the challenges facing the research ethics community in the years to come.

In this way, our primary aim in this paper is to present a synthesis of the challenges and opportunities raised at the GFBR meeting and in the planning process, followed by our reflections as a group of authors on their significance for governance leaders in the coming years. We acknowledge that the views represented at the meeting and in our results are a partial representation of the universe of views on this topic; however, the GFBR leadership invested a great deal of resources in convening a deeply diverse and thoughtful group of researchers and practitioners working on themes of bioethics related to AI for global health including those based in LMICs. We contend that it remains rare to convene such a strong group for an extended time and believe that many of the challenges and opportunities raised demand attention for more ethical futures of AI for health. Nonetheless, our results are primarily descriptive and are thus not explicitly grounded in a normative argument. We make effort in the Discussion section to contextualize our results by describing their significance and connecting them to broader efforts to reform global health research and practice.

Uniquely important ethical issues for AI in global health research

Presentations and group dialogue over the course of the forum raised several issues for consideration, and here we describe four overarching themes for the ethical governance of AI in global health research. Brief descriptions of each issue can be found in Table  1 . Reports referred to throughout the paper are available at the GFBR website provided above.

The first overarching thematic issue relates to the appropriateness of building AI technologies in response to health-related challenges in the first place. Case study presentations referred to initiatives where AI technologies were highly appropriate, such as in ear shape biometric identification to more accurately link electronic health care records to individual patients in Zambia (Alinani Simukanga). Although important ethical issues were raised with respect to privacy, trust, and community engagement in this initiative, the AI-based solution was appropriately matched to the challenge of accurately linking electronic records to specific patient identities. In contrast, forum participants raised questions about the appropriateness of an initiative using AI to improve the quality of handwashing practices in an acute care hospital in India (Niyoshi Shah), which led to gaming the algorithm. Overall, participants acknowledged the dangers of techno-solutionism, in which AI researchers and developers treat AI technologies as the most obvious solutions to problems that in actuality demand much more complex strategies to address [ 24 ]. However, forum participants agreed that RECs in different contexts have differing degrees of power to raise issues of the appropriateness of an AI-based intervention.

The second overarching thematic issue related to whether and how AI-based systems transfer from one national health context to another. One central issue raised by a number of case study presentations related to the challenges of validating an algorithm with data collected in a local environment. For example, one case study presentation described a project that would involve the collection of personally identifiable data for sensitive group identities, such as tribe, clan, or religion, in the jurisdictions involved (South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and the US; Gakii Masunga). Doing so would enable the team to ensure that those groups were adequately represented in the dataset to ensure the resulting algorithm was not biased against specific community groups when deployed in that context. However, some members of these communities might desire to be represented in the dataset, whereas others might not, illustrating the need to balance autonomy and inclusivity. It was also widely recognized that collecting these data is an immense challenge, particularly when historically oppressive practices have led to a low-trust environment for international organizations and the technologies they produce. It is important to note that in some countries such as South Africa and Rwanda, it is illegal to collect information such as race and tribal identities, re-emphasizing the importance for cultural awareness and avoiding “one size fits all” solutions.

The third overarching thematic issue is related to understanding accountabilities for both the impacts of AI technologies and governance decision-making regarding their use. Where global health research involving AI leads to longer-term harms that might fall outside the usual scope of issues considered by a REC, who is to be held accountable, and how? This question was raised as one that requires much further attention, with law being mixed internationally regarding the mechanisms available to hold researchers, innovators, and their institutions accountable over the longer term. However, it was recognized in breakout group discussion that many jurisdictions are developing strong data protection regimes related specifically to international collaboration for research involving health data. For example, Kenya’s Data Protection Act requires that any internationally funded projects have a local principal investigator who will hold accountability for how data are shared and used [ 25 ]. The issue of research partnerships with commercial entities was raised by many participants in the context of accountability, pointing toward the urgent need for clear principles related to strategies for engagement with commercial technology companies in global health research.

The fourth and final overarching thematic issue raised here is that of consent. The issue of consent was framed by the widely shared recognition that models of individual, explicit consent might not produce a supportive environment for AI innovation that relies on the secondary uses of health-related datasets to build AI algorithms. Given this recognition, approaches such as community oversight of health data uses were suggested as a potential solution. However, the details of implementing such community oversight mechanisms require much further attention, particularly given the unique perspectives on health data in different country settings in global health research. Furthermore, some uses of health data do continue to require consent. One case study of South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda suggested that when health data are shared across borders, individual consent remains necessary when data is transferred from certain countries (Nezerith Cengiz). Broader clarity is necessary to support the ethical governance of health data uses for AI in global health research.

Recommendations for ethical governance of AI in global health research

Dialogue at the forum led to a range of suggestions for promoting ethical conduct of AI research for global health, related to the various roles of actors involved in the governance of AI research broadly defined. The strategies are written for actors we refer to as “governance leaders”, those people distributed throughout the AI for global health research ecosystem who are responsible for ensuring the ethical and socially responsible conduct of global health research involving AI (including researchers themselves). These include RECs, government regulators, health care leaders, health professionals, corporate social accountability officers, and others. Enacting these strategies would bolster the ethical governance of AI for global health more generally, enabling multiple actors to fulfill their roles related to governing research and development activities carried out across multiple organizations, including universities, academic health sciences centers, start-ups, and technology corporations. Specific suggestions are summarized in Table  2 .

First, forum participants suggested that governance leaders including RECs, should remain up to date on recent advances in the regulation of AI for health. Regulation of AI for health advances rapidly and takes on different forms in jurisdictions around the world. RECs play an important role in governance, but only a partial role; it was deemed important for RECs to acknowledge how they fit within a broader governance ecosystem in order to more effectively address the issues within their scope. Not only RECs but organizational leaders responsible for procurement, researchers, and commercial actors should all commit to efforts to remain up to date about the relevant approaches to regulating AI for health care and public health in jurisdictions internationally. In this way, governance can more adequately remain up to date with advances in regulation.

Second, forum participants suggested that governance leaders should focus on ethical governance of health data as a basis for ethical global health AI research. Health data are considered the foundation of AI development, being used to train AI algorithms for various uses [ 26 ]. By focusing on ethical governance of health data generation, sharing, and use, multiple actors will help to build an ethical foundation for AI development among global health researchers.

Third, forum participants believed that governance processes should incorporate AI impact assessments where appropriate. An AI impact assessment is the process of evaluating the potential effects, both positive and negative, of implementing an AI algorithm on individuals, society, and various stakeholders, generally over time frames specified in advance of implementation [ 27 ]. Although not all types of AI research in global health would warrant an AI impact assessment, this is especially relevant for those studies aiming to implement an AI system for intervention into health care or public health. Organizations such as RECs can use AI impact assessments to boost understanding of potential harms at the outset of a research project, encouraging researchers to more deeply consider potential harms in the development of their study.

Fourth, forum participants suggested that governance decisions should incorporate the use of environmental impact assessments, or at least the incorporation of environment values when assessing the potential impact of an AI system. An environmental impact assessment involves evaluating and anticipating the potential environmental effects of a proposed project to inform ethical decision-making that supports sustainability [ 28 ]. Although a relatively new consideration in research ethics conversations [ 29 ], the environmental impact of building technologies is a crucial consideration for the public health commitment to environmental sustainability. Governance leaders can use environmental impact assessments to boost understanding of potential environmental harms linked to AI research projects in global health over both the shorter and longer terms.

Fifth, forum participants suggested that governance leaders should require stronger transparency in the development of AI algorithms in global health research. Transparency was considered essential in the design and development of AI algorithms for global health to ensure ethical and accountable decision-making throughout the process. Furthermore, whether and how researchers have considered the unique contexts into which such algorithms may be deployed can be surfaced through stronger transparency, for example in describing what primary considerations were made at the outset of the project and which stakeholders were consulted along the way. Sharing information about data provenance and methods used in AI development will also enhance the trustworthiness of the AI-based research process.

Sixth, forum participants suggested that governance leaders can encourage or require community engagement at various points throughout an AI project. It was considered that engaging patients and communities is crucial in AI algorithm development to ensure that the technology aligns with community needs and values. However, participants acknowledged that this is not a straightforward process. Effective community engagement requires lengthy commitments to meeting with and hearing from diverse communities in a given setting, and demands a particular set of skills in communication and dialogue that are not possessed by all researchers. Encouraging AI researchers to begin this process early and build long-term partnerships with community members is a promising strategy to deepen community engagement in AI research for global health. One notable recommendation was that research funders have an opportunity to incentivize and enable community engagement with funds dedicated to these activities in AI research in global health.

Seventh, forum participants suggested that governance leaders can encourage researchers to build strong, fair partnerships between institutions and individuals across country settings. In a context of longstanding imbalances in geopolitical and economic power, fair partnerships in global health demand a priori commitments to share benefits related to advances in medical technologies, knowledge, and financial gains. Although enforcement of this point might be beyond the remit of RECs, commentary will encourage researchers to consider stronger, fairer partnerships in global health in the longer term.

Eighth, it became evident that it is necessary to explore new forms of regulatory experimentation given the complexity of regulating a technology of this nature. In addition, the health sector has a series of particularities that make it especially complicated to generate rules that have not been previously tested. Several participants highlighted the desire to promote spaces for experimentation such as regulatory sandboxes or innovation hubs in health. These spaces can have several benefits for addressing issues surrounding the regulation of AI in the health sector, such as: (i) increasing the capacities and knowledge of health authorities about this technology; (ii) identifying the major problems surrounding AI regulation in the health sector; (iii) establishing possibilities for exchange and learning with other authorities; (iv) promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in AI in health; and (vi) identifying the need to regulate AI in this sector and update other existing regulations.

Ninth and finally, forum participants believed that the capabilities of governance leaders need to evolve to better incorporate expertise related to AI in ways that make sense within a given jurisdiction. With respect to RECs, for example, it might not make sense for every REC to recruit a member with expertise in AI methods. Rather, it will make more sense in some jurisdictions to consult with members of the scientific community with expertise in AI when research protocols are submitted that demand such expertise. Furthermore, RECs and other approaches to research governance in jurisdictions around the world will need to evolve in order to adopt the suggestions outlined above, developing processes that apply specifically to the ethical governance of research using AI methods in global health.

Research involving the development and implementation of AI technologies continues to grow in global health, posing important challenges for ethical governance of AI in global health research around the world. In this paper we have summarized insights from the 2022 GFBR, focused specifically on issues in research ethics related to AI for global health research. We summarized four thematic challenges for governance related to AI in global health research and nine suggestions arising from presentations and dialogue at the forum. In this brief discussion section, we present an overarching observation about power imbalances that frames efforts to evolve the role of governance in global health research, and then outline two important opportunity areas as the field develops to meet the challenges of AI in global health research.

Dialogue about power is not unfamiliar in global health, especially given recent contributions exploring what it would mean to de-colonize global health research, funding, and practice [ 30 , 31 ]. Discussions of research ethics applied to AI research in global health contexts are deeply infused with power imbalances. The existing context of global health is one in which high-income countries primarily located in the “Global North” charitably invest in projects taking place primarily in the “Global South” while recouping knowledge, financial, and reputational benefits [ 32 ]. With respect to AI development in particular, recent examples of digital colonialism frame dialogue about global partnerships, raising attention to the role of large commercial entities and global financial capitalism in global health research [ 21 , 22 ]. Furthermore, the power of governance organizations such as RECs to intervene in the process of AI research in global health varies widely around the world, depending on the authorities assigned to them by domestic research governance policies. These observations frame the challenges outlined in our paper, highlighting the difficulties associated with making meaningful change in this field.

Despite these overarching challenges of the global health research context, there are clear strategies for progress in this domain. Firstly, AI innovation is rapidly evolving, which means approaches to the governance of AI for health are rapidly evolving too. Such rapid evolution presents an important opportunity for governance leaders to clarify their vision and influence over AI innovation in global health research, boosting the expertise, structure, and functionality required to meet the demands of research involving AI. Secondly, the research ethics community has strong international ties, linked to a global scholarly community that is committed to sharing insights and best practices around the world. This global community can be leveraged to coordinate efforts to produce advances in the capabilities and authorities of governance leaders to meaningfully govern AI research for global health given the challenges summarized in our paper.

Limitations

Our paper includes two specific limitations that we address explicitly here. First, it is still early in the lifetime of the development of applications of AI for use in global health, and as such, the global community has had limited opportunity to learn from experience. For example, there were many fewer case studies, which detail experiences with the actual implementation of an AI technology, submitted to GFBR 2022 for consideration than was expected. In contrast, there were many more governance reports submitted, which detail the processes and outputs of governance processes that anticipate the development and dissemination of AI technologies. This observation represents both a success and a challenge. It is a success that so many groups are engaging in anticipatory governance of AI technologies, exploring evidence of their likely impacts and governing technologies in novel and well-designed ways. It is a challenge that there is little experience to build upon of the successful implementation of AI technologies in ways that have limited harms while promoting innovation. Further experience with AI technologies in global health will contribute to revising and enhancing the challenges and recommendations we have outlined in our paper.

Second, global trends in the politics and economics of AI technologies are evolving rapidly. Although some nations are advancing detailed policy approaches to regulating AI more generally, including for uses in health care and public health, the impacts of corporate investments in AI and political responses related to governance remain to be seen. The excitement around large language models (LLMs) and large multimodal models (LMMs) has drawn deeper attention to the challenges of regulating AI in any general sense, opening dialogue about health sector-specific regulations. The direction of this global dialogue, strongly linked to high-profile corporate actors and multi-national governance institutions, will strongly influence the development of boundaries around what is possible for the ethical governance of AI for global health. We have written this paper at a point when these developments are proceeding rapidly, and as such, we acknowledge that our recommendations will need updating as the broader field evolves.

Ultimately, coordination and collaboration between many stakeholders in the research ethics ecosystem will be necessary to strengthen the ethical governance of AI in global health research. The 2022 GFBR illustrated several innovations in ethical governance of AI for global health research, as well as several areas in need of urgent attention internationally. This summary is intended to inform international and domestic efforts to strengthen research ethics and support the evolution of governance leadership to meet the demands of AI in global health research.

Data availability

All data and materials analyzed to produce this paper are available on the GFBR website: https://www.gfbr.global/past-meetings/16th-forum-cape-town-south-africa-29-30-november-2022/ .

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of the attendees of GFBR 2022 in Cape Town, South Africa. This paper is authored by members of the GFBR 2022 Planning Committee. We would like to acknowledge additional members Tamra Lysaght, National University of Singapore, and Niresh Bhagwandin, South African Medical Research Council, for their input during the planning stages and as reviewers of the applications to attend the Forum.

This work was supported by Wellcome [222525/Z/21/Z], the US National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council (part of UK Research and Innovation), and the South African Medical Research Council through funding to the Global Forum on Bioethics in Research.

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JS led the writing, contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. JA contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. CA contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. PYC contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. AE contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. JWG contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. AH contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. DJ contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. KL contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. DP contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper. EV contributed to conceptualization and analysis, critically reviewed and provided feedback on drafts of this paper, and provided final approval of the paper.

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Shaw, J., Ali, J., Atuire, C.A. et al. Research ethics and artificial intelligence for global health: perspectives from the global forum on bioethics in research. BMC Med Ethics 25 , 46 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-024-01044-w

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-024-01044-w

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