A lot of research was shared at an anesthesiologists’ conference. Technology helped ensure it reached the people it needed to.
Last year’s conference of the Annual Society of Anesthesiology was a big one: more than 12,000 attendees, with around 2,000 poster presentations delivered in three days.
All that activity meant getting attendees to connect with the poster that’s relevant to their work, let alone the researchers behind it, could be a challenge. “Even though poster sessions are formal, they’re really informal because the chances you’ll be able to meet with the authors are low, the chances you’ll have to engage with the author is very low, and the chance of someone asking an author a question is also very low, because sometimes posters are very niche,” says Joel Chetzroni, CEO of Multilearning, which developed the tools ASA used to handle posters at the conference.
Digital poster sessions aren’t new, as more organizations work to reduce the wasteful and cumbersome nature of paper posters. But for last year’s ASA conference, Multilearning developed a system that allowed both attendees and presenters to personalize their experiences, giving both presenters and attendees better clarity about when they would be able to discuss their research.
ASA staff onsite also provided assistance, serving as moderators and facilitators at the poster sessions. The format also allowed other presenters to “attend” the session remotely, allowing for more real-time conversations.
But the posters were also accessible at any time by attendees, which was meaningful for measuring what content was most attractive to attendees. “When the screens are not used for poster presentations, they’re in poster-browsing mode, which means that people can consult any posters—they don’t need to wait,” Chetzroni said. “Day one, day two, day three, day four, they can see any posters they want. All those posters are tagged by tracks, so we measure the time spent by posters, and we can link that to the different tracks.” And because the system tracks which specific monitors were most accessed, ASA could also adjust their location to avoid crowding.
Posters were accessible at any time by attendees, which was meaningful for measuring the most attractive content.
Further data on time spent on screens, specific topics, and lead contributors all feeds into the design of the next year’s conference. “We measured poster viewing on the app and poster viewing on the gallery,” Chetzroni said. “And we share all that data with the client at the end of the conference, a full report showing them the trends year after year about posters that have been viewed. What are the key topics? What are the top posters being viewed? The top contributors, the key opinion leaders that have the most impact in terms of posters viewed? That all helps them determine the number of posters available on those topics next year.”
But that data can also help attendees in real-time, highlighting which presentations have had the most engagement within an attendee’s particular interests. “It’s useful for viewers to be able to see right away which posters have had more impact in their field than others,” Chetzroni said. “So if they don’t know where to start, they can see the posters that we know have had an impact.”
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