COVID-19, big data top themes for all-virtual ENDO meeting
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Organizers behind this year’s ENDO annual meeting created a virtual program that builds on last year’s first-ever online experience, incorporating the latest research on the COVID-19 pandemic, cutting-edge science and online networking.
The meeting, taking place Saturday to Tuesday, will feature a mix of on-demand and live programming for clinical and research audiences, including 70 live sessions and another 70 sessions accessible on-demand.
“This is the largest endocrine meeting, but it is not about quantity, but also quality,” Felix Beuschlein, MD, professor of internal medicine and director of the Clinic for Endocrinology, Diabetology and Clinical Nutrition at University Clinic Zurich in Switzerland, and chair of this year’s meeting steering committee, told Healio. “For me personally, I have attended ENDO for the last 25 years. It is practically part of the circadian rhythm to go each year. It is the place to be from an international perspective for endocrine meetings.”
This year’s meeting will mark the Endocrine Society’s second all-virtual event in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year’s ENDO annual meeting, originally scheduled to take place in San Francisco in March 2020, was abruptly canceled as lockdowns were imposed worldwide, with organizers citing the “unprecedented health emergency.” The 2020 meeting was ultimately rescheduled and held as an all-virtual event in June, attracting more than 20,000 online attendees worldwide.
“As we planned this year’s meeting, we left a slot open in the schedule for the latest COVID-19 research,” Beuschlein said in an interview. “What it evolved into was a joint session between European Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society [pre-meeting session, which took place Wednesday], focusing on topics such as COVID-19 plus obesity, COVID-19 plus diabetes, COVID-19 plus thyroid. We look at the disease from different angles.”
This year’s meeting will include a special focus on COVID-19 research related to endocrine conditions, with featured sessions examining the implications of the pandemic for people with obesity, diabetes, adrenal insufficiency and vitamin D deficiency.
Planning COVID-19 content was challenging, as new data continue to emerge daily and information is changing, Beuschlein said.
“There will still be things to cover in time — what did the pandemic do to our medical system? What was lost? What will be the long-term repercussions?” Beuschlein said. “Right now, we are focusing on the mechanistics, epidemiology and the learning points that come with the disease. These are some of the reasons, in the beginning, we kept this [schedule] open, knowing there will be new data coming in. We set it up at the latest time point possible in order to have the latest content.”
Some of this year’s meeting highlights include the following:
- Plenary sessions: This year’s meeting will offer two presidential plenary sessions in addition to six plenary sessions. Big Data and the Future of Endocrine Research includes talks from Atul J. Butte, MD, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and Griffin P. Rodgers, MD, of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The Impact of Basic Tissue Engineering features talks from Andres J. Garcia, PhD, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Brian K. Kobilka, MD, of Stanford University.
- Science Pathways: This year’s science pathways, designed to be a “meeting within a meeting,” integrate discussions, poster sessions and virtual networking opportunities. Focus areas are diabetes and metabolism, neuroendocrinology, nuclear receptors and signaling and reproductive endocrinology.
- “A little help from my friends”: A series of case presentations and discussions taking place throughout the meeting will explore the collaborative relationships between endocrinology and dermatology, oncology and psychiatry, with moderated question and answer sessions.
- Meet the professor: The popular meet-the-professor sessions continue in a virtual format, with 24 live sessions and another 20 available on-demand.
“The learning curve has been steep — Zooming, planning all the virtual content,” Beuschlein said. “The scientific community has learned to live this partially virtual life. Content-wise, nothing much has changed. Much of the content from past meetings has been preserved and updated for this year. Some of the background structures are the same, but other things can be done in a virtual environment without losing the content. The challenge is to keep everyone engaged and provide an experience that resembles attending in-person.”
The Endocrine Today and Healio.com staff will provide coverage from the ENDO annual meeting, including reports on the sessions, expert perspectives and more. For a detailed meeting schedule or to register, visit www.endocrine.org/meetings-and-events/endo2021.
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Healio interview
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