Virtual, In-Person, AVLS prepares for 2021 By Dr. Robert Worthington-Kirsch, AVLS 2021 Congress Chair
GAYLORD ROCKIES RESORT & CONVENTION CENTER
Greetings, fellow AVLS members! I hope everyone is safe and healthy in the new reality we have been facing for several months. As I sit down to write this in the middle of August 2020, we are in the short period between finalizing the schedule for sessions and speakers for the October 2020 meeting (“Cast Your Vote!”) and gearing up to create the slide decks to use when speaking at the conference.
chatting with friends about our experiences, and getting a pearl from one of our industry partners at lunch or one of my colleagues at the end of the day over a Manhattan.
AVLS 2020 is going to be an exciting and new thing – all virtual and completely available. Although our faculty will present live over four days with many periods of simultaneous sessions, anyone who desires can watch what they do not see live at a later date for the same CME credit, allowing us to offer 80 hours of credit.
First – the tagline – everyone wants to know the meeting theme. Given that we have a robust Registry 2.0, and the first data from the AVLS PRO will be presented, the 2021 meeting theme is “Show Me the Data!” We are turning an important corner in venous and lymphatic medicine and will have a strong evidence basis to validate what we do for our patients and to direct us into ways that we can do better for them.
The virtual meeting has advantages – you do not have to be conflicted when you want to hear two topics or two speakers presenting simultaneously. Attend one live and the other at a later time. But – we will miss the personal interaction of a live in-person meeting. I know that I often get much out of a connection in the hallways – meeting new people,
As AVLS 2020 develops a life of its own and rolls on towards October, it is also time to start planning the 2021 meeting. AVLS will be in Denver, CO, at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center for a hybrid meeting on October 7-10, 2021.
The AVLS 35th Annual Congress will be a mature hybrid meeting restoring the live in-person interactions that we miss. But there will be a virtual overlay on every session. If you cannot make it to Denver, attend virtually. If you have scheduling conflicts over multiple items of
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interest, attend asynchronously. If a speaker cannot come in person, they will present over the web alongside the inperson speakers. Similar to this year, attendees will be able to earn CME for every session by watching recordings of sessions in addition to the live experience. We are going to focus on the data. What does it tell us about how we are doing in caring for patients? What are the areas we need to work on? How can we tweak our protocols? Maybe even get a first glimpse of the Grail – what is the “right” level of treatment? And we are going to focus on how to use that data beyond our practices. How do we present our needs to our industry partners? How do we present our case to regulators? How do we show the value of our services to the patient and to the payers who control the purse strings? AVLS 2021 will be an excellent time for us to learn and grow in our practices and for our specialty. I look forward to seeing everyone, whether physically or virtually, in Denver.
