Face-to-Face With the Future of Medical Meetings

Author: David McMillin       

Medical meeting organizers explored how one of the top health-care institutions is reshaping education at the PCMA Education Conference. Get a glimpse inside the Cleveland Clinic with a behind-the-scenes video of the experience.

While the majority of PCMA Education Conference participants were at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland on June 11, a collection of medical meeting professionals made a quick trip to explore the future of patient care at the Cleveland Clinic.

Experts on the sprawling campus, ranked no. 2 on U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals list (behind Mayo Clinic), are doing more than performing surgeries and charting treatment plans for patients. They’re also shaping what those treatment plans will look like tomorrow.

A state-of-the-art amphitheater at the InterContinental Hotel near the clinic delivers high-tech teaching opportunities with the ability to livestream surgeries and host educational sessions that unite health-care professionals around the world.

PCMA put the amphitheater to work with two education sessions. First, Robert Heard from the American College of Emergency Physicians focused on the importance of delivering hands-on learning opportunities.


“How would you like to have your doctor perform a procedure on you that he or she hasn’t practiced since they completed their residency program 10 years ago?” Heard asked. “As associations, we need to up our game and deliver hands-on opportunities to practice the procedures that are on our PowerPoint slides.”

As organizers such as Heard confront the challenge of providing more of those experiential opportunities, their attendees will be facing new issues, too.

Cleveland Clinic Chief Wellness Officer Dr. Michael Roizen offered his perspective on the evolution of aging, and he predicts that life expectancy could increase to 110 years by 2030. If that proves to be true, medical meeting professionals will be forced to revamp their education programs to help their attendees navigate the complexities of caring for an older population.

For a glimpse of how Roizen and his colleagues are approaching education and patient care, check out a video from the experience below. Interested in learning more about new models for medical education? Check out “This Is What Medical Meetings Will Look Like in the Future.”

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