(I rarely do a list post, but could not help myself today
(blame it on my daily reading of @Cracked…)
I often attend medical conferences and hear about the best
practices applied within medicine, but I rarely hear about best practices
applied to the medical conference itself.
In a world of often shrinking budgets and limited bandwidth, we must
choose carefully which conferences we should attend. Embracing some of the suggestions below can make an event a
must attend inspirational and renewing moment in our lives and careers.
1.
The standing table, lounging chair and the walking meeting
I recently returned from a wonderful roundtable discussion on
clinical trials in Indianapolis.
We had great conversations about open data and patient
participation. The only bad part
of the meeting was the back pain I began to suffer after sitting for a few
hours. I am among the ever-growing
group of people who work at standing desks. So staying seated is a special kind of agony. Fortunately, I am also without a
modicum of decorum and had access to my huge suitcase, so I made a standing
table MacGyver style during the meeting.
Some conferences already provide standing tables around the
back of the room and I say kudos to you!
Health 2.0 is one, but if you know of others please give them a shout
out in the comments section.
On the flip side of the coin of attendee comfort is the
lounging couch. As we invite more
and more patients to medical conferences it behooves us to remember, many
attendees are listening while in pain.
I applaud the all the conferences that offer a cool down or comfort room
where attendees can recline. But
sadly, such rooms rarely have access to the content feed of the live sessions
that are ongoing. Medicine X is
the first conference I have attended that offered lounging couches to any who
needed to rest while taking part in the live event. It was rather
epic to see that level of inclusion.
Another great addition to the conference venue is the walking meeting. My friend Ted Eytan, MD introduced me to this gem. Don't feel your conference has to be contained within four walls. Go "on the lam" in a official capacity and have some of your breakout sessions outside while walking. It is incredibly refreshing!
Another great addition to the conference venue is the walking meeting. My friend Ted Eytan, MD introduced me to this gem. Don't feel your conference has to be contained within four walls. Go "on the lam" in a official capacity and have some of your breakout sessions outside while walking. It is incredibly refreshing!
2.
Inviting e-Patient Scholars and Patient Advocates
The ePatient movement is really expanding. More and more patients are taking a
hand in their own medical futures and helping shape health policy. Their questions during Q&A
sessions often change the direction of the conversation of the conference
itself. Their keynotes and panel speeches help other attendees to express their
own personal health stories. Many
of these patients and advocates have very strong social media profiles and
their live-tweeting of events has exposed conference conversations to the wider
world. Look no further than Medicine X to see the enormous potential of e-Patients to spread the content of
a conference.
“But where do I find such e-Patients?” I often hear in
response. Well @speakerlink is a great place to start looking for potential
attendees and speakers. Another
avenue is participation in online discussion groups on Facebook, twitter and
LinkedIn. The future in medicine is "Patients Included."
3.
You must list your #hashtag on Symplur
I can talk about the power of twitter to spread your
conference message until I am blue in the face, but without analytics to
support my point it is only so much hot air. Thank you Symplur Hashtag project for providing proof of the
power of conversations. For
free. I ask conference managers to
please to list their conference hashtag on Symplur. Symplur will archive those tweets for easy access and
provide analysis of the
day. Your data will add to the
ever-greater haul of big data available for analysis to determine trends within
healthcare. If you do this prior to your conference it is a great tool for
pre-promotion. (If you wait till
the day of the event attendees like myself will often do it for you, but don’t
count on that as a back-up plan)
It is a win/win situation. Now all those ePatients can tweet and spread the
conversation and you have proof of the level of spread. You just have to focus on how to fund
those e-Patient Scholars.
4.
Crowdfunding at the Medical Conference
Hosting a medical conference is expensive. It is somewhat terrifying to know
you have to come with thousands of dollars to make your vision of a conference
a reality. Even a conference run
on a bare bones budget will cost about 25K. Sponsors are great if you can get them (thank you Cerner!) and a well
established conference often can.
For the rest of us crowdfunding is a godsend. I personally have worked with both @medstartr and
@Healthtechhatch for crowdunding in the conference world. We focused the crowdfunding effort on
travel and lodging scholarships for e-Patient scholars. Working in partnership with a non-profit
in line with our conference mission was a great help in securing funds.
But the power of crowdfunding attendance to enable
participation in continuing medical education is not limited to conference
organizers. E-Patient
scholars and patient advocates should consider this route to cover their
participation expenses in health conferences and classes that do not offer
sufficient scholarship options. A proof of concept is our dear friend @AfternoonNapper who has done so much for
the role of the patient in the world of medicine.
5.
Traitwise surveys are the way to go.
So how many of you look at that after-conference response
survey in your email in box and whoop with joy? I bet very few of you do, unless it is a @Traitwise
survey. Not only does Traitwise
have a pleasing graphic interface and font selection not reminiscent of the
early 1990’s, their surveys are fun.
They keep you in the loop and informed on how your response fits into
the greater data set of the conference.
And after you complete your conference survey, you can keep going,
filling out survey after survey for the good of mankind. One of my fellow e-Patients did exactly
that after the Partnership with Patients conference. They broke the record for most answers in one session with
over a thousand. (Another reason
you should invite e-Patients: We are very giving people.)
6.
Teach attendees how to live-tweet
One of my favorite quotations is probably misattributed to
Sen. McCarthy: “Beware of Artists
they mix with all classes of society and are therefore the most
dangerous.” Yeah, artists
specialize in mixing it up, but to do that they need a forum.
Nowadays Twitter is that forum, for artists and everyone
else.
If you are running a medical conference for the good of your
attendees and the wider world of medicine, you have several goals. You want to break even. You want people to have an enjoyable
time. But most of all, you want
people to walk away inspired to make this world a better place. In healthcare, many individuals feel
they do not have a voice in policy discussions. I am not just talking patients here. I have spoken to a great many
doctors and nurses who feel like they have worked to make a better system for
20 years without sufficient progress.
They are discouraged and feel alone. I challenge all of you conference planners to get them
live-tweeting, to help them realize there are hundreds, even thousands who
think as they do.
I have attended two conferences wherein the conference
planners designed an entire webinar around teaching attendees how to
live-tweet. One of these events offered a webinar and 1-800 number support to walk attendees through the entire process. The conference organizer
offered raffle items
at the event that attendees who live-tweeted were eligible to win. So many new twitter voices joined a
wider conversation due the efforts of one conference planner.
Do you want your conference to live beyond the after-conference
survey? Do want your attendees to
act upon the content they absorbed?
Then help them tweet; help them discover the voice they always had.
Remember, online the Q&A never has to end and the
microphone is accessible to everyone.
