Diary of a medical conference

A day-by-day how-to for reporting on medical/scientific conferences

One of the joys of being a science/medical reporter is going to scientific and medical conferences.

I’m not kidding – I genuinely love them. They are a frenetic and exciting hothouse of new ideas and information, where researchers who have been beavering away in their own little ponds of scientific and clinical inquiry all come together for one mad intellectual pool party to cross-pollinate with knowledge.

This is the cutting edge of science. Conferences are often the very first time a new discovery is presented to the world, as messy and naked as a newborn. And it doesn’t matter if they’re a newly-fledged PhD or emeritus professor, researchers are always excited to tell people what they’ve been doing.

I’ve been fortunate for the past decade or so to have a semi-regular gig reporting on medical conferences for medical news outlet Medscape (and its previous incarnations). Most have been within Australia, but a couple of times they’re in nearby countries like South Korea.

It’s fun, but also damn hard work.

My brief is to find three stories per day, usually over a three-day conference, and file at least one of those stories each day (the rest can be filed after the conference has finished). Each story must include an interview with the research presenter, and outside comment from someone who saw the presentation or knows the research. I also have to source or take a photo of the presenter, and list any conflicts of interest or disclosures from the researcher and commenter(s).

Here’s a diary of what that looks like, for a two-day conference in South Korea on osteoarthritis. This is a long post, but I’ve included pictures of food along the way to help you keep your strength up.

(Skip to the end for my hot tips for conference coverage, for paid subscribers only!)

Day 1

Having arrived the night before, after a 10-hour flight, I’m pretty wrecked. The conference venue is walking distance from my hotel, and the conference doesn’t start until 2pm, so I’ve got time to get my plan worked out for this first half-day.

While I’m technically covering only two days of the conference, there are a couple of presentations in the first half-day that could be story-worthy, so I’m going along early. Plus it’s a good way to get up to speed on the topics and jargon.

Freaky high-rises and street characters that remind me of the Octonauts: I must be in South Korea.

What sessions to go to

The editor has suggested some hot topics to look out for, and highlighted some of the presentations and sessions that could deliver a story. I also look for sessions that might be interesting, meaning that they will present something that is relevant to clinicians.

I rarely go to sessions on basic/lab/animal studies, because it’s a long way from that to something that could affect clinical practice. Even phase 1 clinical trials are risky because so many new interventions fail between phase 1 and phase 2/3.

If I have a gap in the schedule, and I have time, I’ll often sit in on the review/plenary talks because they are a great way to get rapidly up to speed on the hot topics in the field, get my head around the main jargon and acronyms that are used, and identify experts who might be good to approach for comment.

This conference has a mix of longer talks of around 40 minutes, which are generally reviews or putting forward a viewpoint on an issue; shorter talks of 10 minutes where people present study data; then these weird ‘flash talks’ of just two minutes for selected posters.

How I get what I need for the story

After a decade of doing this, I’ve worked out a strategy to organise my reporting days.

First, I set up a word doc which lists each day, each session and each presentation I hope/plan to get to, including its time and location in the venue. Conference venues can be huge, with little time between sessions, so I need to be able to navigate quickly to where each session is.

For each of the sessions or presentations I’m interested in, I list the speaker, their email address (if I can find it), the names of the session chairs and their email addresses, and the title of the session.

I include email addresses because I need to interview the presenter and one other independent commentator for each session. My first option is to grab them after the session for a quick 5-10 minute chat but that’s not always possible, especially if they’re also rushing off to another session. Having their email address to hand means I can quickly get in touch and try to arrange a meeting while they’re still at the conference.

It’s all structured in Word so I can easily and quickly navigate to days, sessions and presentations. Here’s what that looks like:

My word doc for the conference gets pretty big but easy to flick around.

I also download the conference app to my phone, and star/highlight all the sessions that I’d like to get to, so I can quickly see where I need to be and when. The app often includes abstracts for the sessions, which are good to have.

When I’m sitting in a presentation I’m interested in, I record the audio either on my digital recorder (placed on the seat next to me or the armrest) or using Quicktime on my computer. I photograph every slide with my iPhone. It means I’ve got that presentation on tap for when I come to write up the story, which is important for making sure I have all the facts and figures. I don’t ever publish the sides or broadcast the recording – it’s purely for my own use in writing the story.

2pm-3.30pm

First session of this conference, and already I’ve identified my first story. After the presentation, I approach the speaker and interview him, and get a profile photo on my iPhone. The whole process of interview takes about 5-10 minutes; because I’m writing a 500-600 word news story and already have the entire presentation, I’m usually pretty succinct with my questions.

I was hoping to also catch one of the session moderators for their comments but they’d left by the time I finished interviewing the speaker. I have their email addresses, so I email both moderators asking if either might be able to comment on the presentation. Fingers crossed one of them responds, because the story can’t happen without outside comment.

One of the two moderators is a distinctive-looking chap, so I could hang around the conference opening drinks at 6pm and try to catch him. But he’s also the chair of the conference board, so there’s a pretty good chance everyone else will be wanting to talk to him too, and I’m not quite that pushy!

3.45pm-5pm

I sit through a session of high-rating late-breaking abstracts. These are usually worth checking out, because late-breaking abstracts are for studies that have concluded since the deadline for submitting papers for the conference, but which the organisers think are important enough to make special room for in the schedule.

There’s a possible story, so I get the recording and presentation slides, but it’s not quite strong enough to get me to interview the presenter. I have their email address so if I change my mind later, I can still try to line up an interview.

I call it a day. Off to find some interesting food for dinner (this place, which does a very enjoyable spicy haejung-guk, or hangover soup), then back to the hotel to crash.

I get a year’s worth of chilli in one week, starting with this bum-burner: spicy hangover soup.

Summary

• Interviews done: 1

• Stories identified: 1

• Stories filed: 0

Day 2

Up at 5.30am (which is actually 6.30am Sydney time, so not as dramatic as it sounds) to get ahead for the day. Breakfast in the hotel, because it’s easier.

My first task is to set up my schedule, so I go through the list of presentations the editor has highlighted, check there aren’t any other talks that look interesting, and set up my schedule in my word doc and in the conference app.

Second task is to start transcribing the interview and presentation audio from the first story from day 1. Hopefully I’m able to get my outside comment for this story today from one of the two moderators of that session.

Then it’s off to the conference.

8.45am-10.15am

There are two story-worthy presentations in this session, one of which I knew was coming because it’s being simultaneously published in a major medical journal.

I manage to catch both speakers and one of the session moderators for interviews straight after the session finishes.

One of the presentations also had a few questioners and commenters, which I captured with my recording. They highlighted some interesting points to raise with one of the speakers and gives me some additional points to include in the story.

Sometimes I’m able to catch the name of the question-asker and approach them afterwards to get their thoughts. Unfortunately, the audio in the conference room wasn’t clear enough to hear their name, or they didn’t say, and I can’t picture them clearly enough to track them down.

But having the questions on the recording gives me the option to refer to one or two of the questions in the article and include the speaker’s responses. That can be useful if the question is particularly good and elicits more interesting material from the presenter.

The questions asked after a talk can also give you an idea of what the room thinks of the presentation. If there are no questions or comments, maybe the presentation isn’t that impactful. If there are lots, it can mean either it’s really important or really controversial (listen out for people saying things like, ‘thank you for that provocative presentation’, which is conference-speak for ‘what the fuck?!?’ But scientists are polite types, so that’s about as confrontational as they’ll get).

10.45am-12.15pm

No sessions in this time slot are of interest, as they’re either basic/pre-clinical research or sponsored presentations.

I generally don’t attend sponsored presentations because my personal view is that they’re basically advertising spots for sponsors, and they don’t go through the same rigorous selection process as presentations in the general sessions. They can be informative though, so are sometimes worth it just to learn stuff or get updates.

Lunchtime finds me a fabulous jeongol (hotpot) restaurant downstairs in the conference centre. It is packed full of locals – always a good sign. I make an absolute arse of myself by doing everything wrong, but the wonderful staff help me to work out what I’m supposed to do (with much tutting under their breath in Korean).

For other novices in Korean cuisine: when the hotpot boils, you dip the frozen slices of meat in the boiling soup to briefly cook them, and add in the noodles (hidden under the meat). The egg stuff totally confused me.

There’s a sponsored lunch session which I drop into afterwards, but it’s packed (there’s a free lunch included, which always attracts lots of people given there’s no lunch provided at the conference), so I’m wedged in which makes it hard to type or record. The sessions are pretty technical, and I’m not sure I’ll get anything useful from it so I leave. Better to use this time to start transcribing the interviews from my other stories and start working on the first story to file.

2pm-3.30pm

The next session at 2pm has another interesting presentation that I think could be a good story. I get my recording and my slide photos, then fortuitously the woman sitting next to me gets up to ask a question at one point and I realise she’s a high-profile Australian rheumatologist.

The session ends, and I speak to my neighbour and the woman she was sitting with – also a high-profile expert – about this presentation and also about the talk from from yesterday that I’m writing up. Two comments/experts with one interview! I also manage to catch the presenter and interview him.

I’m feeling pretty happy at this point, because I’ve got four stories of the six I need to get. That’s a solid position to be in, given that this is a shorter, smaller conference than usual. I still need to get outside comment on the first story, because neither of the two moderators have responded to my email. I keep spotting them around the conference, but they’re always surrounded by people and hard to approach.

3.30pm-5pm

Next up is the poster session, where researchers stand at their poster so people can ask them questions. It’s packed and noisy, and there are so many posters it’s hard to know where to start. I could explore, but I think at this point my time is better spent working on getting my first story ready to send by the end of the day. I find a quiet room and by the end of that break, I’ve written my first story.

5pm-6.30pm

The final session of the day has a couple of presentations that could be interesting, but nothing really grabs me.

I’m coming to appreciate that osteoarthritis is one of those conditions that doesn’t really have easy solutions. A lot of presentations look at the pathophysiology and possible causes etc but when it comes to treatments – which are largely lifestyle changes or surgery – there’s a lot of ‘we tried this but it didn’t really do much’. Those presentations are still worth covering – and one of my four is just that – but it doesn’t exactly make for exciting headlines.

Then it’s 6.30pm and the conference is finished for the day. I’m standing around wondering where to go for dinner when I spot one of the moderators from the very first session I attended on the Thursday; one of the two I have emailed to ask for their comment. He’s alone, so I home in on him like a comment-seeking missile and get his thoughts on that first presentation.

I’m feeling pretty happy with my story list at this point.

But the best laid plans of mice and journalists often go astray. As I’m leaving, I get an email from one of the previous speakers I interviewed asking if I can hold off on running the story because they’ve just submitted to a major journal and don’t want to jeopardise publication.

Damn.

Back to the hotel, stopping at a supermarket for some cheap and cheerful snacks for dinner because I’m still stuffed from the enormous lunch. I do a re-read and edit of my piece, and send it off to the editor. I get my schedule written up for tomorrow, do a bit more transcribing of interviews, then it’s 9pm and I’m cooked.

Summary:

• Interviews done: 7

• Stories identified: 3

• Stories filed: 1

Day 3

8.45am-10.15am

On my way into the conference, I cross paths with the presenter from the day before who was worried about my story risking his study getting published.

I had mentioned that issue to my editor, who directed me to a useful commentary about the Ingelfinger Rule – named after an New England Journal of Medicine editor who came up with a policy to discourage authors from trying to get published in multiple journals at the same time.

The commentary pointed out that news reporting of conference presentations did not violate the Ingelfinger rule. I had forwarded it to the reluctant presenter in the hope it might persuade him to let me go ahead with the story. He is very gracious and agrees.

The first session of the day has three presentations that are all interesting, but one in particular really catches my attention because it involves using sham physical therapy as a control group to compare to standard physical therapy.

I remembered – and the presenter also spoke about – a famous trial from 2013 which used sham surgery to demonstrate that knee arthroscopy for meniscal tears was no better than placebo, and thus effectively killed the use of knee arthroscopy for this condition.

The sham physical therapy involved using dummy ultrasound, where the lights were on and the ultrasound machine made noises, but no energy came out. It also used massage and manipulation of joints other than the affected one. That seemed pretty cool in and of itself, but then to demonstrate that the sham physical therapy was not only as good as the real thing, but both were associated with reductions in pain, was kind of mind-blowing. All hail the placebo effect!

At the end of the session, I corner the presenter, get my questions and a photo. I also recognise one of the audience members because I had interviewed her after her presentation the day before, so she is a handy person to approach and ask what she thought of the presentation. And thus another story in the bag.

Of the other two presentations I was interested in from that session, one seemed a little less solid because a question asked at the end of that presentation suggested the data might not be as strong as it looked. So I decide to let that one go.

The second presentation I was interested in was also a good one. The presenter has left, so I send them an email asking if they would be willing to meet for an interview. I had also managed to catch the name of someone who asked a question of that presenter, so I figure I can track the questioner down for comment if I needed to.

10.45am-12.15pm

Off to the next session, which is one of the few to include presentations on possible new drugs of osteoarthritis. One looks interesting, but the same data was presented late last year at a US conference, and Medscape had already covered it.

The other is sort of interesting but it is phase 1/2 data that didn’t really give a lot of detail on clinical outcomes. Mindful that a majority clinical trials fall over between phase 1/2 and phase 3 – the effects seen in the phase 1 just don’t translate to a more real-world patient population – I decide it isn’t quite strong enough to report.

12pm-2pm

I have a couple of hours free around lunch, so after a quick meal (not exciting enough for a photo) I find a quiet room and started writing up my second story. That involves transcribing my audio from the presentation, and from the interview with the speaker and the commenter, then writing it with the data I had from the slides I had photographed.

By the end of the two hours, I have written the story draft. I don’t send it straight away, as I prefer to leave it an hour or two then come back for a re-read and edit before I send.

2pm-3.30pm

The first afternoon session has a lightning two-minute presentation about a poster that looks really interesting. It’s almost impossible to get much detail in two minutes, but I like the story idea so I grab the presenter at the end for a chat. He is really helpful and not only gives me lots of info but also shows me the specific product (a shoe) and takes me over to the poster.

I still need outside comment for that story. I spot one of the two moderators and ask him if he might be willing to share his thoughts, but he demurs, saying he really isn’t a shoe guy. So I go hunting for the second moderator.

3-30pm-5pm

Because it is the poster session, most of the conference attendees are in the poster hall. I march up and down the crowded aisles looking for the second moderator, and by sheer luck I find him. By even greater luck, he definitely is a shoe guy and is able to give me some thoughtful comments on the presentation and the context for it.

Finally I have the interviews and material I need for all six stories! Cue huge rush of relief.

Then I get an email back from the presenter I’d listened to earlier in the day saying she was happy to chat and I could find her at her poster. I track her down for an interview, figuring it is always good to have a spare story just in case the editor doesn’t like one of the other ones.

I love that moment when I know I’ve got enough good stories. Conference coverage is great fun, really interesting and I love the frisson of scientists and researchers sharing their work with each other for the first time. But it’s also damn hard work.

In this case, I also got a couple of possible longer story/feature ideas to suggest, which is a bonus.

5pm-6pm

Just for fun, I sit in on a tongue-in-cheek debate session where two heavyweights in the field take opposing positions on a particular issue. I didn’t need to – it wasn’t likely to deliver a story – but I thought it would be interesting and probably amusing, and it was.

Before I head to dinner, I take the time to re-read and edit my second piece, then send it to the editor. Then I have well and truly earned my beer, and a free day to explore Incheon tomorrow.

Summary:

• Interviews done: 5

• Stories identified: 3

• Stories filed: 1

Aftermath

I write and file my third story the following day, but still have plenty of time to visit the National Museum of World Writing Systems in Incheon (highly recommend), and plough through the many delicious offerings at the Sinpo International Market.

Tteok-bokki, or spicy rice balls – a Korean favourite – at Sinpo International Market in Incheon.

My flight departs at 9.40pm the following evening, so I spend a bit of time in the morning transcribing some more of the interviews for my remaining three stories, then head into Seoul for some eating and sightseeing.

The final two stories are filed over the next few days after I return – allowing some time to recover from an overnight flight and also catch up on other demanding deadlines I have been putting off.

In a last-minute blow, my Ingelfinger-nervous presenter has received word from higher up the research food chain that they would like us not to publish the story about their research, again because of (unfounded) concerns it will jeopardise their hoped-for publication in a high-impact journal.

But I have also come away with a couple of possible feature ideas, so I’m hoping to work on those soon before the ideas drift out of my brain.

And that is a typical medical conference coverage journey. Thanks for coming along for the ride.