Method to share learning in real time at scientific meetings: lessons from the IHI-BMJ International Conference on Quality and Safety.

Abstract

Background: Capturing and disseminating key learnings on emerging themes for conference participants is challenging, yet also presents a significant opportunity to distill, share and discuss learning in real time with conference organisers and attendees. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and British Medical Journal (BMJ) collaborate annually to convene a Health Quality and Safety conference attracting 1000 to 3000 attendees each year.

Aim: To test a learning system that harvested and synthesised the key lessons shared by conference participants at the 2022 IHI-BMJ Gothenburg Forum, and to disseminate this content.

Methods: Twelve invited Forum attendees collected and shared their 'breakthrough learnings' via electronic survey. Three IHI team members synthesised the participants' responses into themes that were shared and refined in real time at an in-person Forum session including 35 additional participants.

Results: Participants shared four learning themes: collaboration and co-production, trust, meaningful communication about data, and broadening the scope of the Science of Improvement field to multi-disciplinary and multi-system approaches.

Conclusions: Collection of key learning on emerging topics of interest to the health system improvement community is feasible and yielded information both for dissemination and real-time learning. While not representing the full scope of the conference learnings, the content resonated with an additional group of reviewers at the conclusion of the conference and has guided planning for the next annual meeting. This approach may be helpful in capturing key themes for discussion and planning by similar improvement communities.