14 KEY BENEFITS OF HYBRID MEETINGS
As a combination of in-person and virtual visits, hybrid meetings offer the best of both worlds when it comes to the medical field. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for hybrid meetings, where patients, physicians, and other participants needed a flexible medium to interact with in-person/face-to-face interaction or offer the option of connecting virtually.
While the format of hybrid meetings – in-person and virtually- have been in place for years, the convenience and many other benefits have been realized during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.
From delivering optimal care for patients based on real-time data, observing the newest surgical procedures in academic conferences, and creating treatment plans regardless of where each party is located, hybrid meetings help bridge the gap in our rapidly-digitized world.
What are Hybrid Meetings?
For those unfamiliar with hybrid meetings, the idea is that in-person appointments between in-peron active participants and those who are available through digital meetings via virtual collaboration tools (like Medchat, Zoom, Google Hangouts, etc) create new possibilities and paradigms when it comes to healthcare.
Without a shared physical space, participants can share ideas and information to provide the best outcomes in all facets of patient care. Due to these new possibilities, there’s a new cohesive experience for both patients and providers that creates a new paradigm of healthcare, such as the growing reliance on the possibilities of telehealth.
With many in-person visits requiring only a chart of a patient’s data, physicians can adequately treat necessary medical conditions without being in the same room. This allows patients to schedule an in-person visit when warranted or simply request a video conference to receive treatment.
With this in mind, there are plenty of benefits that can be realized from the intersection of digital meetings and in-person meetings. Let’s take a look fourteen (14) key benefits of hybrid meetings, including:
- Reduced Wait Times
- Facilitates Better Learning
- Widespread Adoption
- Effective Integration with Smartphones
- Geographic Agnosticism
- Coordination with Multiple Time Zones
- Modernization
- Cost-Effectiveness
- Greater Inclusivity
- Accommodates a Variety of Meeting and Event Types
- Offers a Distinct Competitive Advantage
- Enhanced Public Reputation
- Recording Capabilities
- Offers Greater Cybersecurity Than Ever Before
1. Reduced Wait Times
When it comes to providing excellent patient care, every second counts. Even for non-emergency events, healthcare around the world has seen a steady rise in wait times.
Logistics are an issue, where patients, physicians, and other stakeholders may not be willing or physically capable to wait for care. With hybrid meetings, instantaneous connections can help physicians more quickly evaluate patients. For example, a physician that schedules a virtual follow-up after a procedure can avoid interrupting the healing process while still gaining insight into the patient’s condition. Or, capacity limits at a private practice can be circumvented by handling patients virtually without waiting in their personal vehicle.
2. Facilitates Better Learning
Hybrid meetings have a great advantage for learning opportunities. With most physicians familiar with in-person sessions and virtual communication, having a hybrid methodology is viable for such events as cadavers and simulation exercises.
One modern example is the Internal Medicine Review 2022, where a variety of formats are supported at the event. While initially set up in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic for a virtual socially-distanced event, event organizers realized that the hybrid meeting model was able to create an even-more immersive experience for participants and observers.
3. Widespread Adoption
Considering that telehealth has gained wider acceptance in the medical field and through everyday usage, it’s safe to assume that hybrid meetings are following suit. In the past, some compatibility and connectivity issues may have made hybrid meetings less than ideal – however, the technology is now robust and widely-available. With this availability, healthcare providers are creating new norms about how, when, and where healthcare interactions take place.
One critique of hybrid meetings is that they would become exclusionary to those who weren’t technologically literate – particularly among the elderly and disabled. However, it has been shown that the ubiquity of smartphones and our growing reliance on them for all aspects of our lives means that hybrid meetings will become even more viable.
4. Effective Integration with Smartphones
Over 83% of the world’s population has a smartphone. With hybrid meetings only requiring a camera or audio source for virtual participation, it’s safe to say that some of the benefits that come with hybrid meetings are smartphone-centric.
There’s plenty of use-cases that show how hybrid meetings conducted on smartphones is shaping healthcare:
- Fundraising events with live donation features (ex. Patreon, PayPal, Kickstarter)
- Instant interaction for participants around the world
- Video conferencing
- Integration of virtual reality/augmented reality platforms
- Real-time analytics of patient data, statistics, and other information
- Live chat
- And many other possibilities
5. Geographic Agnosticism
Underserved, remote, and rural populations can also benefit from hybrid meetings. These areas have historically suffered from an inability to attract and retain talented personnel, but with hybrid meetings, individuals have the option to choose either an in-person meeting or via teleconferencing to increase the quality of available care.
Another advantage related to geographic agnosticism of virtual meetings is to supplement in-person meetings with the use of live virtual translators. Telehealth in multilingual health systems can realize the possibilities of using remote translators and a full range of multilingual support, such as online help videos and phone support for language barriers. Similarly, family members can be available to provide a source of trusted translation.
Additionally, the integration of live translation apps bridges the gap between non-native speakers during live events. Having participants providing solutions to language barriers opens up a greater dialogue that wouldn’t be available otherwise.
6. Coordination with Multiple Time Zones
One of the biggest challenges of both in-person and virtual meetings is time zone differences. Coordinating important meetings based on set schedules often requires substantial compromise to include all parties during a meeting. For in-person interactions, this obviously means travel to a set destination; for virtual, this means possibly working beyond normal hours.
As a practical example, a live medical conference in London and Los Angeles features an 8-hour time difference – a substantial obstacle for creating an inclusive event. With hybrid meetings, those who are in-person can tailor the event to accommodate those in disparate regions, incorporate recordings of events for commentary/chat capabilities, and other benefits. With live chat options, more participants are empowered with the ability to influence questions and comments during in-person sessions. Similarly, concurrent Q&A chat rooms on sub-topics relevant to the main subject matter can be utilized for more detailed learning.
This synergistic approach ultimately leverages the benefits of both in-person and digital events, creating new possibilities that are still being honed, refined, and realized.
7. Modernization
With the possibilities of tech expanding almost daily, having a hybrid meeting solution enables new forms of interaction that are more in-line with the changing healthcare paradigm. In short, hybrid meetings are quickly becoming the “new normal” in healthcare.
Using virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, 3D simulations, and other emerging technologies, hybrid meetings facilitate a number of potential experiences that simulate in-person meetings. Some of these experiences have begun to include:
- Remote teaching (ie. including lab work, assessment of a surgeon’s skill with a variety of techniques, etc.)
- Creating an in-depth reference for experimental procedures with live analytical data
- Fostering instant collaboration in developing countries to learn new techniques and procedures
- Eliminating the potential for exposure to transmissible diseases for immunocompromised individuals (ie. such as patients and at-risk health personnel).
With these aspects in mind, those healthcare providers that are able to incorporate hybrid meetings into their various systems will gain a competitive advance (see #11 below) and be able to adapt to the ever-evolving nature of healthcare.
8. Cost-Effectiveness
Hybrid meetings are a cost-effective way of facilitating end-to-end communication throughout an entire healthcare practice. When properly implemented into an organization, healthcare providers have the ability of slashing costs while creating new opportunities for a fraction of the cost. For example, doctors that offer remote consultations are able to process more clients without being in the same city/state/country.
More and more, Work From Home (WFH) and remote workers that handle the administrative part of a healthcare practice are able to work outside a practice, leading to a more efficient use of space, less square footage for commercial leasing, and other overheads
Medical codes for hybrid meetings are also becoming more prevalent as this emerging technology is more widely-accepted, leading to greater reimbursement and better overall ROI.
9. Greater Inclusivity
By incorporating the benefits of in-person meetings and virtual meetings, hybrid meetings are by nature more inclusive. There are plenty of use-cases where hybrid meetings have shown potential:
- Accommodating those with focus problems due to conditions like agoraphobia, PTSD, severe autism, anxiety issues, and so forth.
- Enables those who cannot afford the time and expenses to meet in-person with healthcare personnel for check-ups in the most cost-effective way possible.
- Pre-recorded information can be digested properly for those with learning disabilities (ie. dyslexia, the deaf community, speech impediments, etc.)
- Provides an equitable platform for lower-income individuals to have an equal voice with the option of in-person or virtual participation.
- Accommodates the busy lives of physicians and other medical personnel, who often multi-task throughout their workdays.
- Greater access to medical data and images without the need of being physically present, such as PACS radiology images.
10. Accommodates a Variety of Meeting and Event Types
There’s virtually no limit to the types of meetings and events that hybrid meetings offer for healthcare. From conferences to patient consultations, learning procedures in real-time to interviews for new personnel, hybrid meetings span multiple spectrums of the in-person and virtual meeting realm.
One of the most common types of hybrid meetings involves only having presenters at the live event, with “attendees” participating from home, their office, or other locations. Also, with the growing prevalence of podcasts, multiple stakeholders can tune in to participate or offer commentary based on their niche in the healthcare space.
11. Offers a Distinct Competitive Advantage
Competition among healthcare providers has never been more intense. With rising rates of worldwide inflation and greater demands from patients, healthcare practices need all of the available tools at their disposal to appeal to patients, efficiently accommodate consultations from other physicians, and ultimately stay profitable during these trying times.
Part of this competition comes from offering a patient-centric flexibility in the type of care they wish to receive. With the prevalence of easy-to-use apps, for example, patients and healthcare personnel expect this flexibility throughout their entire experience.
Hybrid meetings offer the perfect solution of meeting this need, as patient follow-ups can be performed in different locations while also enabling in-person meetings when necessary. Similarly, automated reminders can be used to ensure that patients never miss an appointment or automatically schedule those who are in queue.
Also, with rising demand in patient services, there’s also the need to attract and retain talented personnel that prefer hybrid meetings versus mandatory in-person participation. Healthcare practices that align their methodologies to incorporate hybrid meetings ensures that all age groups – from older individuals that prefer in-person communication to the more digitally-savvy talent – can participate in a medium that best suits their preference.
12. Best Overall Reputation
Expanding on the previous benefit of hybrid meetings, healthcare providers are keenly aware of their reputation to meet the expectations of patients, colleagues, personnel, and other stakeholders. With the prevalence of review-based rating platforms like Yelp and GoogleMaps, healthcare providers need to maintain a positive reputation at all costs.
To this end, hybrid meetings add convenience and flexibility to empower patients of all needs. This, in turn, creates a better overall reputation among the public to ensure that even in the most competitive markets and areas, there’s still
13. Recording Capabilities
Allowing both personal connections and connections that extend far beyond the physical confines of the event, hybrid meetings are typically recorded for posterity. These recording capabilities provide a number of benefits to both virtual participants and in-person participants:
- Liability factors for complete transparency (such as adhering to HIPAA regulations)
- Documentation of procedures to prevent lawsuits from malpractice
- Opportunities to review information that may be lost due to the scope of an event (such as overlapping sessions/presentations)
- Enable professional interaction/discussion between healthcare to further new research and academic collaborations
- Learning opportunities for physicians at their convenience and availability
- Efficient creation of training materials for future use
- References for media, journalists, and advertisers
- And many other possibilities
14. Offers Greater Cybersecurity Than Ever Before
Contrary to hybrid meetings of the past, cybersecurity has never been more robust than with hybrid meeting platforms like Go Hybrid Event.
Early-adopters of hybrid technologies that used readily-available telecommunication technologies (such as Skype and FaceTime) were often plagued by privacy concerns and cyber attacks. Without adequate security measures in place or ad-hoc communication platforms, there have been a multitude of cases of ransomware and phishing attacks deployed by cyber criminals that originated from unsecure connections.
In response, HIPAA and other worldwide legislation has met this growing need by requiring healthcare practices to use only secure platforms. With hybrid meeting technologies like Med Stream Live, ensuring compliance with regulations and the highest-level of cybersecurity has never been safer for all users.
Conclusion: Realize the Benefits of Hybrid Meetings with Go Hybrid Event
Now that you’re aware of the key benefits that come with offering hybrid meetings in healthcare, you should know that not all hybrid meeting platforms are able to provide these benefits reliably. That’s why Go Hybrid was developed to solve the needs of medical professionals in professional and academic settings.
Designed with these insights in mind, Go Hybrid Event is becoming the most-trusted hybrid meeting platform and live streaming platform available. Go Hybrid Event serves as an academic exchange platform for medical workers around the world, promoting the rapid sharing of global knowledge and experience, building a cross-space academic relationship network, and facilitating career development.
Contact Go Hybrid Events today to learn more about partnering with us today and take your communication to the next level!
