Background: Conferences and meetings bring together thousands of doctors from diverse locations. However, the traveling, accommodation, and arrangement of venues for conferences and meetings are expensive and a lot of time needs to be devoted to these logistics. The purpose of this article was to present our own virtual live conference experience using web conferencing and to briefly outline the basics and advantages of this technology in organization of healthcare conferences.
Methods: Web conferencing technology was used to organize an international bariatric surgery conference, allowing a large number of attendees to participate and interact from wherever they were, using merely an Internet connection with a video player on their personal computers, laptops, or smartphones.
Results: A virtual live conference saves a lot of time and cost and simplifies the logistics needed to organize a learning conference with worldwide participation.
Conclusion: As far as we know, this is the first report of a virtual live conference in healthcare. We see it as the future of organizing experts as well as medical teaching conferences.
Keywords: bariatric surgery; continuing medical education; laparoscopic surgery; medical conferences; telemedicine; web conference; webcast.