Due to COVID-19, healthcare professionals have missed out on critical opportunities to connect with both experts and peers, whilst facing a global crisis that requires collaboration and knowledge sharing like never before. This is why an independent scientific committee of leading experts has designed an interactive 2-day programme to bring healthcare professionals together.
Hosted by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a number of sessions were held on the ON24 virtual events platform, addressing vaccination development, safety and more. To ensure health experts worldwide were given the opportunity to enter the discussion in their native language, GSK used Interprefy’s remote simultaneous interpretation technology and services to provide listeners and speakers with 6 language channels during the sessions.
The Approach
With the pandemic making the execution of planned on-site events impossible, GlaxoSmithKline was challenged to take the congress online and coordinate the transition in a matter of weeks. To host the digital sessions, GSK chose the ON24 events platform for its vast range of possibilities and ease of use. But no matter how sophisticated the functionalities, one important piece of the puzzle was still missing just two weeks before event launch: Remote simultaneous interpretation. With thousands of experts from across the globe attending the events, overcoming the language barrier and creating a common understanding was key to making the Vaccine Virtual Days a success.
Having worked with Interprefy for a number of on-site events in the past months, GSK reached out to Interprefy for their recommendation on a remote interpretation solution. To their pleasant surprise, Interprefy had just entered into a partnership with ON24, allowing ON24 customers to receive interpretation services in any language to support digital events.
“Two weeks before the event, we were still stuck on the issue of interpretation. There were issues of non-compatibility and no solution in sight, so we were extremely delighted and relieved to hear that Interprefy’s services integrate into ON24”, says Isabelle Bang, Senior Congress Manager, Vaccines Global Conferences at GSK.
The fact that Interprefy managed to come on board and enable remote interpretation within two weeks is simply amazing. The whole process from quotation to execution was extremely fast, straightforward and well-coordinated.
The Outcome
Over 5,000 healthcare and pharmaceutical experts attended the digital sessions from June 29th to June 30th, joining discussions on vaccine development, safety, antimicrobial resistance and more.
Working in pairs, a team of 10 platform-trained interpreters with a great deal of industry-relevant experience provided remote simultaneous interpretation in Spanish, , French, German, Italian and Portuguese throughout the sessions. With a tight schedule of panels and interpreting highly technical and scientific topics, interpreters worked hard to deliver high-quality services via the Interprefy platform.
“The event was a huge success in terms of figures, engagement and technical execution and we’ve received fantastic feedback”, Isabelle Bang sums up. In fact, the event proved to be such a success that Vaccine Virtual Days is expected to become a regular series of events in the future.
