Medicine 2021, 2022 and 2023

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) came to Groovy Gecko to build their annual conference for the third year in a row. Following the brilliant success from their first ever virtual conference in 2021 that was previously only physical, we created a bespoke website for them, embedding our virtual presentation software, EckoEnterprise, into the site with additional integrations with Kaltura. We set up registrations within the site and also supplied remote production packs for the speakers.

The virtual event in 2021 saw a 630% increase in audience attendance compared to their physical conference in 2019, and was their most successful conference up to that time.

Objectives.

The RCP’s annual conference was due to take place in April 2020, however the RCP had to alter directions due to COVID-19, delaying the conference and hosting it virtually in January 2021. They wanted Medicine 2021 to be a ‘meeting of medical minds.’ Across the two days, they needed to offer clinical learning, networking opportunities and interactive sessions while keeping their audience engaged. We had 3 months to create, develop and deliver a virtual platform that could offer this with a high level of innovation.

What we did.

Our developers created a customised, virtual platform for the RCP annual conference, focusing on creating an interactive, user-friendly platform that worked for the members and wider NHS workforce. RCP were thrilled to see that during the conference, delegates easily navigated their way to talks, networked with other users, viewed sponsor stands and attended virtual poster presentations.  To offer such a large amount of content in just 2-days, we built streams that ran concurrently on the platform. Each session offered the opportunity to react to the speakers with emojis and ask questions. There was a dedicated on-demand section with 13 sessions of additional content. The platform also supported eight skills workshops and we embedded a ‘networking lounge’ into the platform which allowed delegates to virtually meet in groups to discuss conference content or catch-up. The ability to turn their cameras on meant that there was still a personable feel to the networking, despite being online.

To add value for sponsors, we built a sponsorship exhibition hall into the platform, offering a virtual exhibition hall showcased RCP’s new building, The Spine. Each sponsor logo linked to a dedicated sponsor page, with information, downloadable content and contact forms to encourage engagement.  These pages had over 1,000 visits. Sponsors also had the ability to host a virtual symposia. These sessions had a total of 2,016 views. At Medicine 2019, RCP had a total of 248 attendees across 6 sponsored symposia, meaning this year’s attendance increased by 630%. 

the results.

Medicine 2021 was RCP’s most successful conference up until that point. Over 1,400 delegates from 39 countries and 40 medical specialties registered, making this the largest annual conference hosted by the RCP.  Additionally, its success is reflected by the average viewing time, at 5 hours and 46 minutes. In a survey, 91.5% of the audience said the conference was ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ in terms of usefulness.   

This conference also had the most diverse speakers of any physical RCP conference, with a 50:50 split in gender balance, and a diversity balance saw 29% of the speakers from BAME backgrounds. Both figures have increased since Medicine 2019, where 38% of the speakers and chairs were female and 21% were BAME.

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