Nagpur: December and January is considered as period of medical conferences and Nagpur, being centrally located, hosts many such national and global events every year. This year too, 48th national conference of Indian Prosthodontic Society (IPS) was scheduled to be held in city from December 3 onwards. But, Covid-19 conditions did not allow the gathering of delegates from across the country. Overcoming this, the dentists took an option to go ‘virtual’, but with a difference.
Unlike popular webinars and online discussions, the IPS conference had a complete conventional conference look. Even the venue — Smruti Mandir in Reshimbagh — which was earlier booked for the mega event was maintained. The difference was that the speakers, moderators, chairpersons of talks were seated at their home and more than 2,800 delegates, who had registered for this conference, were in their respective homes attending the talks virtually. Even a trade exhibition was held online during the conference, just like the way it used to organize during live conferences.
“Most medical associations, including ours, had declared year 2020 as ‘Zero Year’ as we are not going to witness any public gathering in conferences due to the pandemic. So, we decided to hold the virtual event which goes very near to the real event,” said Dr Neelam Pande, the conference co-chairman.
The organizers have developed an application, which allows online entry into a conference venue. Here, a user has to select the conference hall where the symposium/discussion of the user’s preference is under way. On clicking the venue, live or recorded relay of the talk/symposium starts.
“The conference received enthusiastic response from all delegates with more than 2,800 registrations. Total 40 national and international speakers and nearly 1,000 scientific abstracts will be broadcast during the power-packed 4 days of the conference,” said Dr Pravin Sundarkar, president IPS Nagpur branch.
Dr Sattyam Wankhade, treasurer of IPS Nagpur, said that various aspect of prosthodontics are being discussed. “We have booked 10 rooms where 20 papers are presented online daily. Experts listen to these papers in this room and later ask questions online to the presenter. Ten-minute time limit for presentation and 5 minutes for question-answer is followed in online manner,” he said, adding that the new way of conference is more organized.