Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• . Arti Gupta
• . Limalemla Jamir ¹
• . Rajeev Aravindakshan
• . Dhrubajyoti J. Debnath
• . S. Sathiyanarayanan
• . Rakesh Kakkar ²

¹ Department of Community and Family Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Guwahati, Assam

² Department of Community and Family Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bathinda, Punjab, India

Abstract

In COVID pandemic, attending the continuing medical education, workshops, and conferences with
physical attendance is not possible. We designed, developed, and hosted the first of its kind academic
virtual/online conference at par with an in‑person academic conference to disseminate the expertise
of the renowned subject experts along with researchers to present their research work due to the
ongoing pandemic. We, in this article, had summarized the most critical steps in order to make the
process easier for first‑timers while providing our more comprehensive walkthroughs on each step.
We choose a live session of the speakers on the Zoom meeting mode to retain the atmosphere of
a live conference. WhatsApp, Google (Google Meet and E‑mail), and Kahoot were other platforms
to communicate with speakers, researchers, and participants to seamlessly participate. A number
of advantages in terms of protection for delegates/speakers and their families came from the Virtual
Conference on Nutrition and Health, restricting the spread of COVID‑19, low budget for organizers,
economically much cheaper alternatives both for speakers and participants, dissemination of
knowledge, time productive, and meeting research paper presentation eligibility for a professional
course. When one is new to technology, try adding an innovative aspect as a starting point to future
virtual and in‑person events, and seeing how it works is imperative. Ensuring Internet bandwidth,
updated hardware, or webcam and/or microphone functionality at the participant end is critical.

Keywords

• Conference
• COVID‑19
• online
• virtual
• web based