Fiona McDonald, Managing Director of Millbrook Medical Conferences, is delighted to have been shortlisted for the Best Legacy Award within the ABPCO Excellence Awards.

Fiona is recognised for her tireless dedication to organising first-class medical education through the establishment of Millbrook in 1992, which today serves healthcare professionals worldwide by ensuring the delivery of first-class education through a range of in person, virtual and hybrid conferences. In the last ten years alone, Millbrook has educated over 10,000 medical practitioners and organised 371 conferences!

By providing healthcare professionals in several different disease areas with accessible medical education through a variety of different conferences, Millbrook is ensuring the facilitation of the knowledge they need to make informed, and often lifesaving decisions, as well as contributing to vital medical advancements. The education is vital to the NHS as well as private and international healthcare systems to improve patient outcomes and the standard of healthcare for all, forever.

Speaking of the nomination, Fiona said:

“I’m flattered to have been put forward for this prestigious award. When I founded Millbrook Medical Conferences 30 years ago, I was aware of the need for professional, high-quality, accessible and focussed medical education.

“Looking back over the years I’m so proud that, along with an incredible team, we have gone some way to filling this gap and moving forward our intention is to continue to provide these hugely worthwhile face-to-face conferences and increase the access globally via streaming or viewing on-demand video footage.

“The reason I am so confident of our future challenges is because, even after 30 years, I continue to love coming in to work knowing that I have a fantastic team supporting me.”

BCIS Lifetime Achievement winner Fiona is nominated alongside the ICC Wales team for its work on Protect Duty and ExCeL London which has nominated EASL for the International Liver Congress 2022.

Winners of the awards will be announced on Friday 9 December at Birmingham ICC. Click here to find out more and book your tickets. Shortlisted candidates for all categories were selected by an independent panel of judges, and the winners of four of the awards will be decided by delegate judging prior to, and during the event.

The award was presented during the main programme of the conference, with a speech given by both Prof. Nick Curzen and Fiona McDonald.

In his speech, Nick thanked Fiona for her dedication both to providing first-class education to interventional cardiology over the last 30 years, and to the Society, through the organisation, and growth of ACI, and more recently for the flawless administration of the Society.

Fiona thanked the Millbrook team and her family for their support in building Millbrook since its inception 30 years ago. She also, thanked the Society for taking a chance on her back in 2004.

One Lifetime Achievement Award is presented each year during the conference, often to Society members who have dedicated their lives to supporting the Society, or to those who have contributed to major advances in interventional cardiology over their career. The president, honorary secretary and treasurer of BCIS work together to make the decision.

This year took a slightly different approach by recognising Fiona and her work through Millbrook, who have worked with BCIS since 2004 on the ACI conference. Fiona has overseen nine presidential terms and knows the society better than most.

Millbrook’s involvement since 2004 has been integral to the growth of this conference from restyling the exhibition and thus increasing sponsorship significantly, reworking branding and design and improving communications across the board. With Millbrook’s input, new education platforms such as live case transmissions, simulator demonstrations and interactive patient case discussion groups have been introduced. Furthermore, Millbrook provides delegate and faculty logistical support for ACI.

Not only are Millbrook key to the success of ACI, but Millbrook also took over the administration of the Society in 2020, and over the past two years has supported all aspects of the society, from working group support, council meetings, membership management, new website creation, financial and budgetary support and marketing. Millbrook have been praised by BCIS for our fast response to queries and for our dedication to supporting and advancing the Society in any way that’s needed.

The award was presented during the main programme of the conference, with a speech given by both Prof. Nick Curzen and Fiona McDonald.

In his speech, Nick thanked Fiona for her dedication both to providing first-class education to interventional cardiology over the last 30 years, and to the Society, through the organisation, and growth of ACI, and more recently for the flawless administration of the Society.

Fiona thanked the Millbrook team and her family for their support in building Millbrook since its inception 30 years ago. She also, thanked the Society for taking a chance on her back in 2004.

One Lifetime Achievement Award is presented each year during the conference, often to Society members who have dedicated their lives to supporting the Society, or to those who have contributed to major advances in interventional cardiology over their career. The president, honorary secretary and treasurer of BCIS work together to make the decision.

This year took a slightly different approach by recognising Fiona and her work through Millbrook, who have worked with BCIS since 2004 on the ACI conference. Fiona has overseen nine presidential terms and knows the society better than most.

Millbrook’s involvement since 2004 has been integral to the growth of this conference from restyling the exhibition and thus increasing sponsorship significantly, reworking branding and design and improving communications across the board. With Millbrook’s input, new education platforms such as live case transmissions, simulator demonstrations and interactive patient case discussion groups have been introduced. Furthermore, Millbrook provides delegate and faculty logistical support for ACI.

Not only are Millbrook key to the success of ACI, but Millbrook also took over the administration of the Society in 2020, and over the past two years has supported all aspects of the society, from working group support, council meetings, membership management, new website creation, financial and budgetary support and marketing. Millbrook have been praised by BCIS for our fast response to queries and for our dedication to supporting and advancing the Society in any way that’s needed.

On Monday, December 7, the Association of British Professional Conference Organisers (ABPCO) hosted its annual Excellence Awards. The ceremony rewards excellence and professionalism in the world of association events, recognising professional conference organisers and event industry partners for their contributions to the industry. As you may expect, this year was a little different than normal with awards ceremony taking place virtually, allowing the attendees to vote for category winners and view presentations from nominees and winners.

For 2020, an additional award category was added, the Lockdown Hero Award, which recognises the professional conference organisers who have worked against the odds to create events during the COVID era. Millbrook was presented with the special award for its work in facilitating the Imperial College COVID-19 Cardiovascular Conference with two other organisations also recognised as Lockdown Heroes.

The live webinar was Millbrook’s first virtual event, taking place on Thursday, April 2, 2020, with just a 10-day lead time, no budget and the need for a significant global audience. This was important to ensure this vital information on COVID presentation in cardiac patients was shared worldwide to implement change and save lives.

The programme comprised of four highly-engaging sessions featuring 29 talks from 32 members of faculty. Within 10 days, a global audience was generated of over 5,600 participants across all four continents including delegates from Morocco, the USA, India, Norway and Sweden. Post-event, the webinar was made available on-demand and so far has generated a total of 9,300 viewers.

Millbrook managing director Fiona McDonald commented:

“During this extraordinary year, Millbrook, like all professional conference organisers needed to evolve for the COVID era. We have learnt how to use multiple virtual event platforms to become self-taught virtual event specialists in a very short time frame.

“I am so proud of the work our team has undertaken to ensure that medical education can still take place despite being unable to organise traditional face-to-face conferences. It’s been a huge learning curve, but we are extremely proud that Millbrook has facilitated the sharing of important COVID information to physicians worldwide.”

Barbara Calderwood, ABPCO co-chair, added:

“In a remarkable year we expected remarkable entries, and our membership truly delivered.

“ABPCO members demonstrated creativity, flexibility and tenacity as they organised events under very different circumstance compared to anything they have done in the past. Thank you to all our members for submitting their entries and well done to our worthy winners, who were chosen through a mixture of audience voting and judges’ marks.

“Through the addition of the Lockdown Hero awards we were also able to recognise a new breed of member, those who stepped out of their comfort zone and did something different for their clients, peers and audiences.”