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Virtual Medicine Given the challenges that many health-care pro-
viders may have in leaving their office to attend a face-to-face conference, medical associations like AOA are also “exploring options for offering online sessions that run concurrently with live sessions” that take place at OMED, Ross said. AOA has not yet started to offer these online sessions at its meeting, “because we want attend- ees to be able to receive 1-A CME credit for attend- ing these sessions at OMED,” she said, but “we look forward to providing simultaneous webcasts in the near future.” Going hybrid is “one of the things in the works”
for USCAP’s Annual Meeting, Crockett said. “We have a component of that now with our Annual Meeting where we record sessions and sync them to PowerPoint,” she said, but the goal is to “really, truly do a hybrid event where folks can actually feel like they are part of that session. We don’t do the type of hands-on sessions other [medi- cal meetings may offer] — for example, different techniques in terms of surgical procedures. We are doing a hands-on event at our Annual Meeting this year, which is an ultrasound event for startup
pathologists, for those that do fine-needle aspira- tion. We are trying to figure out how that is going to translate to a virtual audience — I think that is going to be challenging. You are not going to have that same experience as you would live. The didac- tic lectures are the ones we are certainly thinking would be beneficial to stream live and then give [the virtual audience] an opportunity to ask ques- tions to the moderator and that sort of thing. That is where we were thinking that we would find what could be of most benefit to the attendee.” As the PPACA is gradually enacted, one thing that is clear is that medical meeting professionals need to stay attuned to their particular communi- ties. “We are continuously asking our members what they need,” NJAFP’s Saputelli said, “to lift the cloud of uncertainty under which they have practiced for far too long.”
. Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.
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