
Joint Annual Conference of the Swiss Society of Pneumology 2018
The Joint Annual Conference of the Swiss Society of Pneumology 2018 took place in St Gallen in May. The conference was organised by the Swiss Society of Pneumology (SGP), but this year, to make the event as inclusive as possible the SGP worked with a number of partner societies. Participating in the joint annual conference were: The European Respiratory Society, The Swiss Society of Paediatric Pneumology, The Swiss Society of Occupational Medicine, The Swiss Society of Thoracic Surgery, The Swiss Society of Pulmonary Hypertension and The Swiss Society of Prevention and Public Health.

The Challenge
Organising a Conference with Several Partner Societies: We have worked in collaboration with the SGP for over two decades and we anticipated that the conference would attract a particularly large number of participants this year. Also, this was the first time the European Respiratory Society (ERS) would be a partner society and many new courses were offered, for example, a HERMES preparatory course by ERS for the written specialist exam. In total, eight workshops, three learning centres and two MPA courses were organised. Our task was to coordinate the wishes and needs of the various societies and to create a joint conference with an appropriate scientific programme.
How Congrex mastered it
We spent a lot of time listening and learning about the needs of our client, as well as to those of the various partner societies. Our entire team was committed and motivated right from the start. In order to make the advanced scientific programme easily accessible to the participants, a new mobile app was created for the conference. This gave attendees instant access to information and updates about the conference and access to the scientific programme on their smart-phone or tablet.