





































       V37 N1 / 2022 

FEATURE

©2022 American Medical Writers Association. All rights reserved.  
ISSN 2163-5315

AMWAJournal.org     35

ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of 2020, scientific conferences around 

the globe have evolved quickly to adapt to a virtual or hybrid 

format when in-person meetings were disrupted by the 

COVID-19 pandemic. With the digital platforms now in place 

to enable virtual participation, interaction with scientific 

content in a digital format will likely become a new norm of 

the scientific conference experience. Digital enhancements 

of scientific presentations and posters may help bridge the 

gap of communication in a virtual format and may extend 

the reach of scientific content. This article provides a brief 

overview of common types of digital enhancements and 

summarizes insights from two conference organizers from 

their conversations at the “InformED” podcast. Researchers, 

conference organizers, and medical communication and 

publishing professionals will continue to optimize the digi-

tal enhancements and explore innovations to maximize the 

value of scientific content disseminated at virtual and hybrid 

scientific conferences.

At traditional in-person scientific conferences, scientific 

content is typically delivered through oral presentations to a 

live audience in meeting rooms or through display of post-

ers in large exhibition halls. In the last decade or so, even 

before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, 

a trend toward the use of digital content had already started 

among many scientific conferences in which e-posters were 

displayed on large screens instead of on poster boards and 

recorded oral presentations and e-posters were made avail-

able on demand to meeting attendees after the conference.

 The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 put 

an abrupt stop to in-person meetings and forced all scien-

tific conferences to quickly adapt to either an entirely virtual 

format in which all participants joined online, or a hybrid 

format that combined some on-site participation elements 

with virtual participation of those who were unable to travel 

on-site due to travel or quarantine restrictions, or who  

preferred to attend remotely for other reasons.1-7 With the 

emergence of multiple variants of (SARS-COV-2), much 

uncertainty remains as to when the world will ever return to 

a pre-COVID-19 state in which fully in-person conferences 

will resume. Virtual and hybrid conference formats also 

opened unprecedented opportunities of wider outreach 

to members and audiences around the globe. As meeting 

organizers have already invested in and developed online 

platforms, these digital infrastructures will likely stay to 

enable hybrid conferences even after the COVID-19 pan-

demic is over.5-7 Therefore, interaction with scientific con-

tent in a digital format will likely become a new norm of the 

scientific conference experience.

DIGITAL ENHANCEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC CONTENT 
AT VIRTUAL AND HYBRID CONFERENCES
What are the digital enhancements in the era of virtual and 

hybrid conferences? How do conference attendees interact 

and consume these digital enhancements? The answers to 

these questions are slightly different for the 2 main types of 

conference content, oral presentations and posters.

 For oral presentations, a prerecorded video of the oral 

presentation is usually required ahead of the conference. If 

a discussant is assigned to moderate a session with several 

talks, the discussant’s presentation that summarizes differ-

ent talks may also be prerecorded. In a hybrid meeting,  

Qing Zhou, PhD, ELS / Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, Tarrytown, NY

Digital Enhancements of Scientific Content at Virtual and  
Hybrid Conferences

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AMWAJournal.org     36Digital Enhancements of Content at Virtual Conferences

even when most presentations are delivered live on-site, 

prerecorded presentations may still be required as backup 

in case a presenter is unable to travel on-site.

 During a virtual or hybrid conference, live broadcasting 

of oral presentations is either delivered live, prerecorded, 

or a mix of both is essential to create a “live” experience for 

meeting attendees to listen and watch these talks for the 

first time. To add to the live interactions, presenters and 

moderators typically join live either onstage (for live presen-

tations) or on screen (by applications such as Zoom) for dis-

cussions and Q&A. Virtual participants can typically submit 

text-based questions by a chat function on the meeting  

platform which are then selected by the moderator for 

answering and discussion.

 For scientific posters, digital enhancements refer to 

additional materials beside the poster file itself on the vir-

tual meeting platform. In the absence of face-to-face inter-

actions between presenters and poster viewers, these digital 

enhancements may help bridge the gap of communication. 

Common digital enhancements include

•  QR codes embedded in posters. These QR codes  

can link to supplementary materials such as  

methodological details, additional results, and  

additional resources.

• Poster slides. These slides, usually brief (eg, 5-10  

content slides, as specified by the conference),  

provide a succinct summary of the poster, thus  

offering a quicker and easier read, especially on 

smaller screens of hand-held devices.

• Audio or video recording of the poster. In these 

recordings, the presenter can give an overview of the 

poster and explain certain key points of the research 

work. In the absence of face-to-face interactions, these 

recordings offer a personal touch to the virtual posters.

 In addition, for both oral presentations and posters, the 

conference platform may enable additional enhancements 

such as auto-generated captions or transcripts accompa-

nying audio and video recordings. The conference platform 

may also allow a meeting attendee to reach out to a pre-

senter to ask questions, thus providing an opportunity of 

developing professional connections that may translate into 

future collaborations.

INSIGHTS FROM MEDICAL SOCIETIES AND 
CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
Several episodes on the InformED podcast offered interest-

ing insights on digital enhancements from the perspective 

of medical societies and conference organizers. InformED 

is a podcast series created by the International Society for 

Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP), in which the 

host interviews different guests in episodes to talk about key 

trends and issues facing medical communication and publi-

cation professionals in an ever-evolving field.

 In episode 4 of the 2020 season,8 the podcast host Rob 

Matheis, ISMPP President and CEO, interviewed Travis 

Hicks, the Director of Web Operations at American Society 

of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). The 2020 ASCO conference 

took place entirely in a virtual format at the end of May 

2020. An important insight by Hicks is that consumption 

of scientific content becomes the “primary focal point” of 

the virtual meeting experience.8 The amount of content 

consumed over 3 days of the virtual ASCO conference was 

impressive: 2.5 million pageviews in 2 days; and at one 

point 16,000 individuals were watching live, with 30,000 

more viewing on-demand content. In the absence of the 

other social aspects of a traditional conference, attend-

ees naturally focused on content, and many discussed the 

content online through social media. For digital enhance-

ments, a big difference from previous in-person meetings 

is the incorporation of the poster video on the platform. 

It turned out that videos were the most consumed pieces, 

although other enhancements were also valuable such as 

slides for download and links to additional resources. ASCO 

also developed homegrown applications to allow meeting 

attendees to ask questions to presenters, which helped with 

building professional rapport and connections.

 In 2 more recent episodes in the 2021 season (episodes 

3 and 4),9,10 Matheis talked to David Barrett, the CEO of 

the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT), 

on navigating the changing medical conferences. In part 

1 of the conversation, Barrett reflected on recent experi-

ences from virtual ASGCT meetings and pointed out that 

the aspect valued the most by attendees was the access to 

live meeting content (eg, live presentations or prerecorded 

materials) as they are being presented.9 Although some 

technical difficulties caused temporary interruptions of 

content broadcasting, the meeting organizers were able to 

fix the problems and restore content streaming. Another 

important aspect valued by meeting attendees was engage-

ment with speakers during the live sessions. Attendees 

could submit questions that were monitored by the session 

chair and “upvote” certain questions to the front of the line 

for answering. In addition, Barrett reflected that the  

virtual format made it possible for attendees to switch  

from one talk to another quickly among different sessions 

(or “talk surfing”), which might not have been possible 

during conventional meetings.

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AMWAJournal.org     37Digital Enhancements of Content at Virtual Conferences

 In part 2 of the conversation that focuses on virtual 

display of scientific posters, Barrett also emphasized the 

importance of poster slides and prerecorded content that 

can enhance the reach of virtual posters.10 The built-in fea-

ture for contacting poster authors also allowed for con-

nections between the attendees and the presenters. Initial 

metrics from the virtual conferences suggested that about 

50% of meeting attendees visited the digital poster halls, 

with varied view counts of individual digital posters  

(ranging from low dozens to several hundreds of views  

per poster). Although no comparison can be made due to 

lack of similar metrics for traditional conferences, these 

numbers may suggest a more active engagement with 

poster materials by conference attendees. Looking ahead, 

Barrett mentioned that the hybrid meeting model would 

likely stay, as the meeting organizers are trying to “marry” 

the 2 approaches of live engagement and enduring the shar-

ing of digital contents to maximize the value of scientific  

conferences.10

SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK
Scientific conferences around the globe have quickly 

evolved to embrace virtual and hybrid meetings in the last 

2 years. The hybrid meeting approach will likely stay even 

after the COVID pandemic and become a new norm for sci-

entific conferences. Digital enhancements of scientific pre-

sentations and posters are therefore important to bridge the 

gap of communication in a virtual format and may extend 

the reach of scientific content. Still, virtual interactions may 

not fully achieve the effect of in-person interactions, and 

there are still drawbacks of digital content such as technical 

difficulties affecting live streaming and the need for addi-

tional resources and IT capabilities to effectively manage 

and maintain all digital content by the meeting organizer. 

Researchers, conference organizers, medical communica-

tors and publishing professionals will continue to optimize 

the digital enhancements and explore innovations to max-

imize the value of scientific content disseminated at virtual 

or hybrid scientific conferences.

Author declaration and disclosures: The author notes no 
commercial association that may pose a conflict of interest in 
relation to this article. The views and opinions expressed in this 
article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the 
views of Regeneron or its employees.

Author contact: qzhou.writer@gmail.com

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