Introduction: Due to COVID-19 restrictions, face-to-face educational meetings and conferences have either been delayed or cancelled. Continuing oncology professional education is vital and virtual platforms are increasingly being used to facilitate delivery.
Methods: We organised a virtual meeting for Queensland oncologists, trainees and pharmaceutical representatives to share updates from the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2020 virtual meeting. The meeting was conducted on the Microsoft Teams™ platform on a Saturday as a single-day event, organised in eight separate 45-minute tumour-streamed presentations. An online feedback survey was sent to all attendees following the meeting.
Results: A total of 96 participants attended the live meeting, which comprised report-back presenters, formal discussants, and concurrent sidebar chat interaction. Median number of active participants via chat feature per session was 13 (range, 8-18). Our survey had respondents, of whom 84% attended the live session.
For future meetings, virtual delivery was the most favoured meeting format (by 45% responders), followed by face-to-face weekend event (31%) and dinner meeting (23%).
The main perceived advantages reported of virtual delivery included: facilitation of remote attendance including from regional centres; the sidebar chat format which allowed concurrent, non-interruptive discussion by attendees; and the convenience of selective attendance of sessions of interest.
The most common suggestions for improvement were related to meeting logistics: restructuring content delivery in the interests of time efficiency, and to enable recording for on-demand viewing.
Conclusion: A virtual meeting platform proved to be convenient method for online oncology education. Based on the satisfaction rates and feedback, it will likely have an ongoing role in future meetings even after the COVID-19 pandemic.