CASE HISTORY
American Thyroid Association (ATA)
Falls Church, Va., USA Largest meeting ATA Annual Meeting Last year Sept. 19–23, 2012, Quebec City This year Oct. 16–20, 2013, Puerto Rico Next year Oct. 29–Nov. 2, 2014, Coronado, Calif.
convn.org/ata-2013
“Our Annual Meeting is primarily for endocrinologists and basic research scientists who have a primary interest in the thyroid,” said Barbara Smith, CAE, ATA’s executive director. “Typically, we have over a thousand, maybe 1,100 attendees. One-fourth of those are international; they come from outside the Americas. There is a good balance of basic science and clinical. We have a relatively small ex- hibit hall, around 30 exhibitors, five of which are members of our ATA Alliance for Patient Education. When people come together at the American Thyroid Association, they are really coming together in order to work on guidelines for thyroid management and clinical management of thy- roid disease, as well as coming together for research into all aspects of thyroid, both basic and clinical.”
Sunshine Act here in the States, but there are many countries that have a Sunshine Act, and again, it’s understanding all of those different compliances and how they will impact your meeting. And that’s terribly burdensome. We’re still trying to get questions answered here about the U.S. Sunshine Act that will be implemented as of Aug. 1. Even though we’re doing international meetings, we do have U.S. speakers. Does it apply when they’re abroad? How does that impact the society, or is that just a reporting [man- date] for industry?
What are some new developments around medical meetings that you’re excited about? BS I’m part of a patient advocacy board that the Society of Nuclear Medicine [and Molecular Imag- ing (SNMMI)] started. Because [ATA has] this alliance of five [patient] organizations, I go on their behalf. I represent the patients. [SNMMI’s Annual] Meeting was fascinating. They have a full-day workshop where their patients hear from the scientists and the physicians about their particular issues. And then we partnered with the patients and took them through the exhibit hall. Their exhibit hall is overwhelming because of all the machinery, all of the MRI machines and that kind of thing.
Because of the Internet and all the patients that are learning so much online — not necessar-
year, and if, for example, we start having ideas from the Dutch Society of Cardiology to have the queen of Holland or some- thing like that coming, that is something that we would actu- ally fight off. The danger would be more the national rather than the international.
This might not be as much for an issue for the international societies, but has the implementation of health-care reform in the United States — Obamacare — affected your meetings? BH Well, the problem is our direct member countries — we’ve got 54 of them, and they’ve all got their own health- care reforms. It just leaves everything up in the air and it increases all the funding issues for people coming and so on. It just makes it that much more complex. We can’t get into any one issue, or any one area of legislation, because there’s just too many to handle.
LA More than just Obamacare is the whole Sunshine Act [provision of the Affordable Care Act] and how this is going to impact our corporate partners and how that trickledown effect will impact us as a society. People think about the new
78 PCMA CONVENE AUGUST 2013
ily good information, but they’re taking into their physician reams of paper and information — I think that will be the new frontier, if you will, of patients participating in a much greater degree. Not only in receiving the education, but in informing their physicians about what’s important.
BH What I find exciting is the fact that the meetings that we do are beginning to be spread over the whole year. The whole question of going mobile, going digital, going remote, going paperless — all of that kind of thing — and the fact that our meetings are a way to engage people throughout the whole year, I think, takes it towards something which has more value and goes beyond just the venue. It’s going to add to the overall impact of what we do. A lot of us that work for associa- tions, we do have the hope that we’re actually doing some- thing that shows a higher cause than just share value and so on, and I think that the way that things are evolving means that our work will improve the impact that the professions that we represent have on society.
. Christopher Durso is executive editor of Convene.
PCMA.ORG
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112