Forecast hazy for future in-person ophthalmology meetings
Despite being in the midst of a world-changing pandemic, the want for clinical education, networking opportunities and the camaraderie that an in-person organizational meeting offers is still highly desired among ophthalmologists.
But planning an annual meeting for thousands of visitors in an ever-changing landscape of medical, federal and local government guidelines, as well as taking all necessary precautions to ensure attendee safety, is a monumental task. The future presents an unknown for annual in-person meetings, as the COVID-19 pandemic is altering factors on an almost weekly basis.
However, successful meetings can still be held virtually if on-site meetings are not acceptable. The biggest advantage upcoming meeting organizers have on their side is time, according to Terry Kim, MD, American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery president and OSN Cornea/External Disease Board Member.
Source: Terry Kim, MD
Transitioning to online
The ASCRS annual meeting successfully transitioned to an online setting in a little more than a month after a decision to cancel the on-site meeting was made in late March. An official announcement was made on April 8, alerting ASCRS members that a complete virtual meeting would be held May 16 and 17, giving the society only 5 weeks to organize the event, Kim said.
“I’m amazed, looking back, at what we were able to accomplish in such a short period of time. The virtual annual meeting was a historic event for ASCRS and an enormous initiative that we decided to move forward with to address the COVID-19 crisis. We took this important step because we thought it would be the best way to help our members with the recovery process. The ASCRS staff and program committee, our faculty and our industry sponsors deserve the recognition for successfully executing this incredible feat,” he said.
Despite the short time frame, the final meeting agenda included more than 400 hours of education and 30 hours of CME credit, Kim said.
Going completely virtual presents challenges that go beyond creating an online infrastructure, Iris M. Rush, CAE, executive director of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, said.
ARVO made the decision to cancel its annual meeting March 11, the day the White House administration announced a ban on travel into the United States. Organizers quickly found that moving to an online abstract-based paper and poster presentation meeting made some presenters uneasy, as the majority of presented research included new science, Rush said.
“Submitters could be hesitant to put new research online. We made the decision quickly to refund all registration costs and provide the option to submit a recorded abstract presentation to all first authors,” she said.
Two rounds of recording releases were offered to presenters, with the understanding that round one content would provide hesitant members with examples of how it would be exhibited. The first round of presentations was popular, garnering more than 8,000 views 3 weeks after going online, Rush said.
Rush said ARVO would continue its practice of publishing abstracts in its flagship journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, but publishing was not contingent on submitting a recorded presentation for the virtual meeting.
“By separating these opportunities, we strived to provide members with two viable options for sharing their vital research. These same options were provided to authors of accepted abstracts for the ARVO Imaging in the Eye Conference, which is held 1 day before the annual meeting each year,” she said.
Preparing for the unknown
Organizing a meeting for 25,000 attendees from all over the world is a complex process that includes multiple inputs from organizational representatives and typically takes an entire year to shape. Add in a pandemic and it creates a unique layer of planning for all scenarios, including virtual, in-person or a combination of both, David W. Parke II, MD, CEO of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, said.
Input from member surveys, focus groups, public health officials and professional educators will help form the options for the AAO annual meeting in November, Parke said.
“Right now, we have nearly the same number of speaker acceptances as we typically have. Members want an in-person meeting, particularly for the networking and socialization,” he said. “Skills transfer courses require direct training.”
The AAO meeting is currently scheduled as an on-site meeting from Nov. 14 to 16 in Las Vegas, with a subspecialty day on Nov. 13. The organization cut a day from its meeting program due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A number of preconditions must be met for the Academy to host an on-site, in-person meeting. Safety is foremost, for both attendees and staff. The venues must also exhibit a demonstrated ability to offer structured meeting rooms and foot traffic avenues that permit appropriate social distancing, Parke said.
“That means that COVID-19 must, in the opinion of public health experts, be sufficiently under control to permit the meeting, that the venue is compliant and, finally, we must have continuing evidence that ophthalmologists plan to come. The final decision will be made by the Academy’s board of trustees,” he said.
Appetite for education is high
The pandemic is a continually evolving landscape, which presents new challenges for organizations planning meetings months in advance. How do organizations ensure the safety of attendees and the craving for scientific collaboration, educational opportunities and networking that occurs at these programs in the current-day situation with COVID-19?
“The answer is, nobody really knows,” Rishi P. Singh, MD, a Healio/OSN Board Member and an upcoming board member of the American Society of Retina Specialists, said.
The ASRS originally planned to host its meeting July 24 to 28 in Seattle. In May, the organization announced it would transition entirely to a virtual meeting to be streamed July 24 to July 26.
Timothy Murray, MD, MBA, ASRS president, and Philip Ferrone, MD, ASRS meeting program chair, announced in a press release the virtual meeting would be held in the same window of dates for attendees who already blocked off the time on their schedules.
With clinical practice having shut down for several months, the appetite for clinical education has grown exponentially. The biggest challenges of a virtual meeting will be its ability to sate the desire for clinical education, keep participation at a high level and encourage the vibrant discussions that usually take place at the annual in-person meetings, Singh said.
“The key for a successful virtual meeting will be limiting the amount of podium time, the didactic time, and increasing the amount of discussion time for participants to ask questions and to engage at every level,” he said.
Challenges of an online transition
A successful virtual meeting requires a large time investment from an organization and its members. Just the number of necessary steps to begin transitioning to an online setting was daunting, Kim said.
An entire virtual infrastructure was created from the ground up to support live discussions and enable Q&A sessions. Presenters were contacted to narrate on-demand posters and paper presentations, and a virtual exhibit hall for industry partners was built in parallel, he said.
Contacting speakers to narrate their presentations for the on-demand section, uploading the information and abstracts onto the meeting site, and making sure the information was accessible at all times for meeting registrants was an enormous task, Kim said.
To help the process, Rush said that ARVO staff members offered guidance and tips to researchers and presenters on how to create successful online presentations before they were submitted. The recorded online presentations ultimately provided a much larger release to ARVO’s global audience.
“You do not need to be in one place at one time to view. We also had to find a way for the speaker and the attendee to interact. That required an added feature in our already developed learning management system that would allow for questions and responses,” she said.
One of the biggest challenges for ASCRS was condensing its material to fit over a 2-day agenda. The on-site meeting was scheduled to include more than 25 symposia and 100 instructional courses. The virtual meeting had to be pared down to eight symposia and eight instructional courses with a well-balanced distribution of topics among the various anterior segment specialties, Kim said.
The ASCRS program committee was able to pare down the agenda to include effective CME and non-CME educational sessions from their cataract/IOL, cornea, glaucoma and refractive surgery specialties. Most impressively, all of the paper and poster sessions were kept intact for the virtual meeting agenda, Kim said.
“The other challenge was making sure the content was relevant to the current crisis. We needed new content that was going to be timely for our attendees,” he said.
A two-part live symposium, “Turning the Lights Back On,” emphasized the challenges ophthalmic practice owners and surgeons are facing during the pandemic and was one of the highlights of the virtual meeting, Kim said.
Kim also said it was opportune that former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, had been scheduled to be the in-person meeting’s keynote speaker. Gottlieb, a noted medical policy expert and public health advocate, presented an hour-long discussion on the challenges COVID-19 poses for medical specialties and the difficulties of treating such a virus.
Organizers also addressed the attendees’ desire for networking in a unique way by creating a virtual portal called “Continue the Conversation,” which enabled visitors to join topic-based small group meeting rooms that could be used to facilitate and continue valuable conversations between presenters and colleagues about a wide range of clinical topics.
“The other major aspect of our virtual meeting was giving our members ample opportunity to interact with our industry partners, who were critical in making this happen. We had a digital exhibit hall that featured virtual exhibit booths and speaker forum events. We had opportunities for attendees to meet up with industry representatives to discuss products or topics,” Kim said.
One important benefit of this virtual meeting platform is that all of the meeting content and CME education is still available to those who want to register by logging onto annualmeeting.ascrs.org.
“While it isn’t a substitute for our in-person annual meeting, it provides an enduring platform that is completely under the control of the registrant to access all of the outstanding clinical education that ASCRS has to offer whenever they want,” Kim said.
Pearls for an online transition
At the height of its traffic, the virtual ASCRS meeting had more than 6,000 visitors at once. Without strong communication and partnership among the ASCRS committees, members and its audio-visual company, the meeting would not have been possible.
Great staff communication may be the most important factor for other ophthalmic organizations that are looking into going virtual for their meetings.
“It does take an excellent team. It was a highly coordinated and concerted effort to get this done on time and done well. There’s no way an individual can do this,” Kim said.
Rush said each organization needs to assess the unique needs of its attendees and presenters to ensure success. For ARVO’s global audience, the on-demand content made more sense vs. live streaming options.
Online options should be more prevalent for meetings in the future, even when in-person events are safe again, Rush said.
“Not all meetings are alike, so ARVO will customize our options for 2021, focusing on making sure our members have the opportunity to deliver their science in the manner most suited for each scientist. Funding will be an even bigger issue in 2021, and we must not assume that we will be back to our prior models as we move forward,” Rush said.
Kiawah Eye 2020 and OSN New York, both organized by Healio Live, a sister company of Ocular Surgery News publisher Healio, may host live audiences in the fall.
“New York is almost ground zero for this, yet we still have a lot of people who are anticipating us running that program in person, live, with discussion with residents and fellow participation. It remains to be seen how we do this and execute this, but there’s an appetite there to do it,” Singh said.
Planning for an on-site meeting
But even with the benefit of time on their side, organizations face a murky and uncertain future for their meetings. A lot depends on what course the virus takes and what input local governments provide leading up to the meeting dates, Eric D. Donnenfeld, MD, OSN Cornea/External Disease Board Member and Kiawah Eye co-director, said.
Kiawah Eye is traditionally held the week after Memorial Day in Kiawah, South Carolina. This year the annual meeting has been delayed until Sept. 11 to 13 and, as of press time, is still scheduled to be an in-person event.
All of these plans are tempered with the knowledge that nobody can predict what will happen with the virus over the summer. The meeting organizers need to be socially and medically responsible with their decisions, Donnenfeld said.
“If for some reason the virus is still active and it’s perceived by medical professionals and by the state government as not wise to hold the meeting, we will hold the meeting in a virtual manner,” he said.
There are several favorable aspects that could support an on-site meeting. The majority of the attendees have historically come to the meeting by car, which eliminates the risk of traveling through an airport during the pandemic.
Second, many meeting events are held outdoors, where the virus is less transmissible. With masks and proper social distancing, the risk will be less than attending an event in a crowded convention center or hotel, Donnenfeld said.
The possibility of holding a hybrid meeting has also been discussed, in which an in-person meeting will take place with a smaller number of attendees and the majority of registrants attending the meeting virtually.
“But there’s no hard date for any of this. We’re taking it week by week and staying in touch with email updates,” Donnenfeld said.
The window for an in-person meeting seems to be open in New York in the fall as well. Many professionals are predicting a lull in the virus in the summer months with a possible late fall rebound, according to Richard L. Lindstrom, MD, OSN Chief Medical Editor and OSN New York program director.
Confidence will return
Patient volume should slowly return to clinics over the summer, and confidence should be high by October. Ophthalmologists may be ready to travel again by then and interact with their colleagues in a meeting setting, Lindstrom said.
“I think the attendance may be somewhat reduced, and it might be more of a local meeting. We have a huge constituency right there in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and in the surrounding states,” he said.
The meeting will not be a case of “being back to normal” if held on-site. Proper social distancing will be enforced, masks will be worn, and individualized seating will have to be configured to increase safety. Instead of traditional classroom-style seating arrangements, half-filled round tables may be utilized instead, he said.
While an in-person meeting is being planned, OSN New York committee members have kept a close eye on the successes of the ASCRS and ARVO virtual meetings if a transition is necessary.
“This could be the first large in-person meeting,” Lindstrom said.
Common sense will have to prevail for the meeting to be successful, Lindstrom said. If attendees are not feeling well, they should not come to the meeting to minimize risk for potential COVID-19 transmission. Discussions will have to be limited in public settings, attendees will have to keep up with their social distancing training, and flexibility will be necessary from meeting organizers and attendees, he said.
“I’ve communicated with [Healio Live] and Vindico leadership, and we have a great program planned for this year’s meeting. Obviously, people are asking us if it’s going to happen, and we’re saying yes it will. I’m telling them all I’m planning on going,” Lindstrom said.
The AAO is following a similar course, with three types of meetings — a full in-person meeting, a full virtual meeting and a hybrid meeting — being simultaneously planned for November, Parke said.
There is no specific cutoff date for any of these decisions, but Parke said the organization is anticipating a decision will likely be made by mid-September.
“But events could mandate a decision earlier or later,” he said.
A new normal
Whether online or in person, scientific progress and education must continue. Organizations must focus on what they can do in the present and cannot allow the inability to meet face to face prevent education, Rush said.
ARVO is a unique community of eye and vision scientists, and the organization has a responsibility to move new discoveries forward in any climate, she said.
“Every scientist is struggling now more than ever with funding issues and delays in research due to closed labs and the diversion of funding to COVID-related projects. Science must continue to move forward,” she said.
- References:
- A new vision for AAO 2020. www.aao.org/annual-meeting. Accessed May 27, 2020.
- ASCRS cancels annual meeting amid coronavirus outbreak. www.healio.com/news/ophthalmology/20200318/ascrs-cancels-annual-meeting-amid-coronavirus-outbreak. Published March 18, 2020. Accessed May 27, 2020.
- ASRS announces virtual 2020 annual meeting. www.asrs.org/annual-meeting/covid-19-update. Accessed May 29, 2020.
- Coronavirus (COVID-19) updates. www.arvo.org/annual-meeting/meeting-info/coronavirus-updates/. Accessed May 26, 2020.
- For more information:
- Eric D. Donnenfeld, MD, can be reached at Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Island, 711 Stewart Ave., Suite 160, Garden City, NY 11530; email: ericdonnenfeld@gmail.com.
- Terry Kim, MD, can be reached at Duke University Eye Center, Erwin Road, P.O. Box 3802, Durham, NC 27710-3802; email: terry.kim@duke.edu.
- Richard L. Lindstrom, MD, can be reached at Minnesota Eye Consultants, 9801 Dupont Ave. S., Suite 200, Bloomington, MN 55431-3200; email: rllindstrom@mneye.com.
- David W. Parke II, MD, can be reached at the American Academy of Ophthalmology, 655 Beach St., San Francisco, CA 94109; email: dparke@aao.org.
- Iris M. Rush, CAE, can be reached at Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 5515 Security Lane, Suite 500, Rockville, MD 20852; email: media@arvo.org.
- Rishi P. Singh, MD, can be reached at Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Ave., Desk i32, Cleveland, OH 44195; email: singhr@ccf.org.
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