Achievements

Based on the need for transparency and fair trade to conduct medical congresses IPCAA has always invested a lot of resources, brainpower and experience in supporting medical societies and all other stakeholders of the meetings industry in developing simple and easy to understand global codes of conduct and meeting guidelines.

 

Initially, this was also necessary in order to cope with new promotional regulations for pharmaceutical products, particularly within Europe, where a lot of insecurity was evident, and even misinterpretation had taken place. Together with the European Society of Cardiology IPCAA developed a first draft of promotional guidelines in the early 90ties which are still the basis for more recent ones and also for all others in several other international medical societies.

 

Due to the diverging objectives between all partners collaboration was not always easy and sometimes it took years of discussion and persuasion to develop the adequate mutual trust which is always the necessary basis for accomplishing a project of common interest.

 

Throughout its history, IPCAA has helped to develop good understanding of mutual needs and interests, to the ultimate benefit of medical societies, congress delegates and sponsors. This has been strongly underpinned through the IPCAA task forces in specific major therapeutic areas, and their close interaction with relevant medical societies and associations

 

Apart from this basic work IPCAA has always expended much effort to develop its relationship with other associations in the meetings industry. Together with its partners IAPCO and HCEA in the Healthcare Congress Alliance (HCA), documentation has been developed for topics such as housing, security, congress bidding and guidelines etc.

 

Based on strong convictions that value must be balanced for all parties involved in a medical congress, IPCAA has always followed a policy of open communication involving all stakeholders in the meetings market.

 

A rapidly changing healthcare environment creates additional ongoing financial and regulatory constraints on industry, and IPCAA is more involved than ever, in acting as the “voice of industry” to help promote better understanding and awareness of the significant change industry is going through, and to seek adaptive and creative solutions to propose, to ensure that negative impact on medical congresses is as limited as possible.

 

Moving forward in such a dynamically changing period, the Association will devote considerable efforts to critically reviewing specific aspects of medical meetings, such as regional and local regulatory , promotional restrictions, Continued Medical Education (CME), corporate or Healthcare compliance matters , matters of high financial impact like virtual meetings, new forms of exhibition and housing conditions and policies, and, for example, the best means of evaluating events, as well as continuing to reinforce relationships with other parties, both traditional and new – amongst them, it is also hoped to forge much closer ties with other branches of the healthcare industry, to establish common frameworks aimed at further improving situations relative to medical meetings.