A turning point in global education: ISN’s new meeting strategy
ISN has developed a new meeting strategy aimed at delivering innovative meetings fully connected to the Society’s overall educational offerings.
Following the ISN World Congress of Nephrology (WCN) 2019, ISN will organize a yearly congress with a specific regional focus and new features that build on the current WCN strengths and offer an improved learning experience for participants, including networking and sessions tailored to a global audience.
ISN Nexus and Forefronts meetings will be replaced by the ISN Frontiers meeting and focus on specific topics as well as complement the scientific and geographic coverage of WCN. Up to two Frontiers meetings will be held each year, with at least one of the meetings attracting an audience of over 500 attendees from all over the world.
Leading the initiative, Chair of the Meetings Committee Carol Pollock said: ‘The 57-year old model has served the ISN well, but we are clearly of the view that the new meetings strategy will better serve our members and enhance nephrology care to our patients in the future.’
The main reason behind the change is to further improve education opportunities for ISN’s members and ensure sustainability within nephrology as well as reinforce and maintain a strong ISN membership. This is line with other medical meetings, and with trends in this sector, which reflect a preference for shorter, more compact and focused meetings, with a regional relevance and a more effective delivery of scientific content to participants.
The hope is to increase global networking and build more partnerships between the global nephrology community, industry, pharmaceutical companies and organisations with aligned missions to fight non-communicable diseases.
WCN will continue to have a thematic focus, but still provide broad range of educational and scientific sessions. The themes of the 2019 congress, taking place in Melbourne (Australia), will include glomerular disease, and end-stage kidney disease.
The first Frontiers meeting will be held in Tokyo in February 2018, with focus being on Global Issues in Kidney and Cardiovascular Disease. A further Frontiers meeting will be held in Sweden in the second half of 2019 on the topic of Cardio-Pulmonary-Renal interactions and their interdependence in disease.
