More than 1,000 attendees from 74 countries recently attended the inaugural Retina World Conference (RWC), held by San Diego-based MCME Global, a full-service medical education company, in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
“Retina was the only main sub-specialty in ophthalmology without its own world congress, yet the industry investment in R&D was the highest,” said Jennifer Redmond, MCME Sr. VP of Medical Strategy. “We recognized an opportunity to create a different kind of meeting where the entire world of retina was welcome to contribute.”
RWC planning started two years ago as a collaboration between opinion leaders in retina and MCME. Interest in the idea grew rapidly, and 35 global retina societies signed up as partners to develop the agenda. The congress drew more than 170 faculty from 36 countries and substantially more attendees than anticipated.
Impactful branding and the use of technology contributed to the success of RWC. “Attendees were blown away by the delivery of content,” said Jennifer. MCME also put a great deal of time into the conference app, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the meeting. The app gave attendees the ability to view presentations and video posters from any device. “Focusing on the details enabled us to bring a new level of sophistication and polish to conference execution,” said Jennifer.
RWC was a huge success, and MCME is already in the planning process for the next Retina World Congress scheduled for 2019.
