Lessons learnt transitioning to a digital conference during the COVID 19 pandemic.

The King’s John Price Paediatric Respiratory Conference1 is one of the largest annual gatherings of paediatric respiratory professionals in Europe, attracting over 550 participants. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the conference to transition to a digital model at short notice. We believe that the lessons learnt from this experience have wide relevance for the future of medical education.\n\nAdvancing medical knowledge is a global endeavour, and collaboration between clinicians and scientists in different countries is increasingly common. Paediatric centres are often smaller than their adult equivalents, necessitating cooperation for development of consensus statements, and to achieve significant patient numbers in research trials. International conferences remain a vital space for sharing and appraisal of new research, especially at a subspeciality level. Attending these conferences can be prohibitively expensive, disproportionately affecting early career researchers, allied health professionals and junior doctors as well as delegates from low-income and middle-income countries who may also be hindered by visa requirements. Digital conferences solve these problems by delivering cost-effective and highly customisable learning experiences. Here, we explore the steps taken to convert an international paediatric respiratory conference to a digital format.\n\nThe planning for the 2020 conference was nearly complete when COVID-19 entered public awareness in the UK. …