When life gives you lemons – when you are given obstacles and limitations: that’s when creativity shines. In science and medicine, the limitations are time (to read up on everything) and (viewing) space – from desktops to phones and watches. One answer is the visual abstract: a deceptively simple, catchy, elegant, and efficient form of visual communication to summarize complex ideas. As a medical student, he drew a daily comic strip for several newspapers in his native Belgium. He later started to illustrate some of his own research publications, then those of colleagues. He has been a Hasbro Children’s Hospital pediatric surgeon for almost 3 decades. He teaches medical illustration to undergraduate students at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx