Are Virtual Medical Events Here to Stay?

Are Virtual Medical Events Here to Stay?

Medical conferences are an essential tool for medical professionals. They are a time to learn about new discoveries and discuss peer-reviewed research. Many such events are also officially approved to deliver CME (Continuing Medical Education) credits. The ramifications of stopping medical conferences and events are far-reaching, and can have an impact on patients that is often not immediately apparent. 

It was therefore with some degree of shock that the medical profession gazed upon a looming 2020, with medical conferences being canceled left, right, and center. Although the medical industry was the one industry that likely appreciated the need for social distancing and canceled events more than any other, that didn’t change the severity of the situation. 

Surgeons, gastroenterologists, cardiologists, and other procedural-type specialists who rely on an exact sequence of skills to perform their duties would’ve been the hardest hit. These sub-disciplines often rely on live demonstrations performed on cadavers, or on simulations that they can closely follow. 

And, of course, there is the personal satisfaction of meeting with colleagues and peers in an informal, relaxed setting, a luxury few in the medical profession can afford. 

Virtual medical events require an excellent platform

Whereas we now have sophisticated and full-fledged online events platforms to prepare top-class medical conferences and online medical events, this didn’t exist at the start of the pandemic.

At the start of the pandemic, virtual medical conferences were not without their hiccups. But this was common in all sectors, such as the unforgettable “cat lawyer” hiccup in the legal field. The world was happy to receive some much-needed comic relief during those initial dark days where moods were low and sadness was high. But we have moved on from that point. Vaccines have restored a large degree of normalcy, and professionals are eager to get up to the standards of peer collaboration that existed before the pandemic. “Cat lawyer” snafus at a medical event simply won’t do anymore.

To achieve that standard, an excellent virtual medical events platform is required because the jury is divided regarding whether medical professionals prefer virtual-only medical events or not. 

One thing is certain, however, and that is that medical professionals demand high-quality content at virtual medical conferences. At least 95% of respondents to a recent survey mentioned this as their prime concern. 

High-quality content has a lot to do with the platform that an event is being presented on. For example, in a virtual medical conference, sharing a file of information should be simple and easy, and participants shouldn't have to spend 20 minutes trying to figure out where to click to download it or save it onto their computers. Holding a virtual medical event on a platform that was designed only for video conferencing instead of full-blown events leads to precisely that kind of situation.

Can virtual medical conferences replace in-person ones?

Yes and no, for two reasons: 

• Personal preferences
• Technical inadequacies

Personal preferences

Some people simply prefer human-to-human contact. They feel most creative and joyful when in the physical presence of their colleagues and peers, and it is this very in-person interaction that stimulates their creative thinking, leading to fruitful collaborations and developments in the future. For such people, a virtual event would never suffice, and it would be an injustice to force them to attend a virtual event because they would be denied the opportunity to thrive according to their particular personality traits. 

The essence of virtual events is inclusivity. Virtual events allow more people to attend because they do not have to travel so far. Virtual events also once allowed people to come together in a time when we were all forced apart. In that same spirit, organizers of virtual events should understand that there is a class of people who prefer in-person contact, and these people should be likewise included in the event. 

Hybrid events are a possible solution here. 

Technical inadequacies

Right now, there is no way to adequately replace in-person demonstrations where participants can peer over a procedure and see it completely in 3D, turning their heads and position as needed to get a better view. The solution to this lies, likely, in the world of Virtual Reality (VR) and Extended Reality (XR), where users can don sophisticated XR glasses and see objects in real life as if they were really there.

Sadly, this technology is still currently sub-par and the glasses that do exist are prohibitively expensive. Perhaps, when the metaverse is in full-blown operation and we all have holograms walking around us and can look in on a demonstration 1,000 miles away as if we were standing in the same room, this might be possible. But, for now, it simply isn’t. In this case, an in-person event is essential. 

A middle ground: Hybrid events

Many medical conferences and medical events can be held entirely online. Specifically, those involving primarily presentations, panel discussions, and poster talks. For those events that require some of the attendees to watch demonstrations and procedures up close, there is the hybrid event option which is a mixture of an in-person and virtual event. 

With a hybrid event, those who absolutely must attend in person can do so. And those who don’t need to, or who are unable to, can still join in virtually. 

Summary

The value of virtual medical conferences cannot be ignored. They are certainly here to stay in some form or another. 

The way to make an online medical conference successful is to provide high-quality content on an excellent events platform that lets attendees experience the event as an event—where they can interact with colleagues in chat rooms and breakout rooms—and not as a staid “lecture” or video conference where they just sit in their chairs listening.