Paperless Medical Conference - Encouraging Engagement

One of the world’s premier biopharmaceutical companies held a two day conference in Madrid attended by 280 delegates. Organisers wanted to encourage the delegates to participate in the conference as much as possible as their feedback on key aspects of the event was crucial for future planning.

They were able to host a fully paperless event by utilising our conference app and delegate management system. Each delegate was issued with an RFID smart badge, which enabled them to access personalised information on various devices throughout the event, as well as individual 7” tablets.

Smart kiosks were positioned at the entrances to the session rooms so delegates could scan their smart badges, recording their attendance at the conference and in the individual sessions and workshops. This allowed organisers to monitor the movements of delegates, as well as enabling them to award the correct CPD points to each delegate.

If a delegate scanned their badge at a kiosk for a session they were not registered to attend, a message would be displayed informing them of this and directing them to the correct room for the session they were due to attend at that time. This assisted organisers with transitioning delegates to the correct sessions.

The bespoke paperless conference app created for this event provided a truly interactive experience for delegates. Once the delegates had logged into the device via their smart badge, they were able to access:

Interactive Agenda- a full agenda for the conference with integrated links to the presentation abstracts and speaker biographies.
Abstracts – a summary of all of the presentations being delivered during the conference.
Speaker Biographies – information about all the speakers including their work history, education and credentials as well as photographs.
Workshop Allocations – personalised information for each delegate, through the use of their smart badge, regarding the breakout sessions and workshops they were registered to attend.
Posters – delegates were able to view and vote on all of the posters displayed in the poster viewing area on their tablets.
Useful Information – general information about the conference such as meal times and locations, hotel information and the organiser’s contact details.
Asset Request – delegates could request further information about new developments in their field, the meeting abstract book and sponsor product information, which was emailed to them after the conference. Due to the smart badges, delegates were able to view their requests on any tablet device throughout the conference.
Feedback Form – this could be completed and submitted at any time during the conference.
Slideshow – delegates could view the presentation slides for the main plenary and any of the breakout/workshop sessions they were attending in real time.
Notes – delegates could make multiple notes, each linked to the relevant session and these were emailed to them after the conference. Using their smart badge, delegates were able to review any notes they had made on any tablet at any time during the conference.
Submit questions & comments – questions and comments could be submitted at any time. All messages were automatically tagged with the session title to assist the moderator. Delegates could direct a question or comment to a particular speaker through a drop down menu option.

Speakers also incorporated voting questions into their presentations to engage their audiences throughout the conference. These multiple choice questions were posed at varying times and the individual tablets held by the delegates would switch screens displaying the question and the answer options automatically.

Organisers could send messages, information and short feedback surveys via push notifications to the delegates at any point during the conference. This enabled organisers to keep delegates up to date with any changes to the schedule and collate instant feedback.

At the start of each session, delegates selected their location via a drop down menu on their tablet allowing the specific information to be displayed such as the slide shows, voting questions and instant feedback surveys.

Your team were extremely accommodating about multiple and last-minute changes and I was so impressed that, despite us delivering slides 1 hour before a workshop started (sorry!), they were able to get these, and associated voting questions loaded onto the tablets. The app looked great and we saw a high level of interactivity between delegates and faculty, which I think stems from how easy to use the system was.

To encourage as much participation as possible with the poster voting, we set up smart kiosks so delegates could vote for their favourite design. They were also able to view the posters and vote on their individual tablet devices. By using the smart badges, organisers were able to ensure that only one vote counted per delegate as any new selection replaced an earlier one. The creators of the winning poster were awarded a prize at the end of the conference.

To ensure that all delegates were able to access live information throughout the event, a private wifi network was created that covered the main plenary room, foyer, four breakout rooms and coffee areas over two floors of the venue.

I just wanted thank you and the whole team for the excellent job. As always we were just a little bit demanding but you guys were excellent at anticipating and solving problems for us quickly, without complaint and in going above and beyond in making recommendations for how things could run more smoothly. The whole onsite team were amazing. I’ve not worked on a tablet-based meeting before that ran so smoothly and we had delegates and faculty all noting how well the meeting ran.

Would you like to know more about Event Technology?

We love talking to people about events and technology, so please do get in touch if you would like to bounce an idea or two around. We would love to hear from you.