2022 is a special year for Millbrook as it sees the company celebrate 30 years’ in organising first-class medical education. Millbrook Medical Conferences prides itself on actively contributing to medical education by providing an accessible and compliant conference and event management platform for healthcare professionals.
Fiona was virtually interviewed by Heather. Amongst a range of other topics, the two discussed the changes to the industry and conferences over the last three decades, whilst also reflecting on how Millbrook has grown from an initial concept that included just a handful of events a year to its current status as a leading UK-based PCO (Professional Conference Organiser) for Medical Education.
Fiona McDonald, winner of the prestigious BCIS Lifetime Achievement Award, set up Millbrook Medical Conferences in 1992 whilst working in the NHS with demand from colleagues looking to run medical education events, but not knowing how to organise such meetings.
Fast-forward 30 years and Millbrook is an award-winning company that has grown to a team of 11, managing up to 40 face-to-face, hybrid and fully virtual meetings a year from 50-5,000 delegates, attracting global participation. Millbrook’s continued success is borne through understanding the requirements of the organisers, delegates and sponsors.
What’s more, in 2018, Millbrook launched sister company Millbrook Medical Logistics, which offers an effective solution to the preparation of educational grants, booking compliant travel, hotel accommodation and processing conference registration.
Millbrook isn’t stopping there though; the company has exciting plans for the next year, which will all be revealed soon!
Millbrook is going from strength-to-strength, having recently been named as ‘Lockdown Hero’ in the 2020 ABPCO Excellence Awards, which reward excellence and professionalism in the world of association events, recognising professional conference organisers and event industry partners for their contributions to the industry. In 2021, Millbrook was extremely proud to have been shortlisted within the ‘Best Conference by an Agency Conference Organiser’ category for BCIS’s ACI Virtual Experience.
Over the 30 years, Millbrook has built up its workforce, continually investing and supporting every team member. In the interview with Heather, Fiona credited her colleagues for getting the business to where it is today and the positive workplace culture. Of the Millbrook team, Dominic Legate, Matt Daly and Lizzie Head are recognised as Associate Members.
ABPCO is a leading UK membership organisation for professional conference and event organisers working in-house and for agencies across the corporate, public, association and other not-for-profit sectors. Selected following the demonstration of experience and on peer assessment, membership gives individual organisers unique credibility amongst clients, suppliers and competitors alike.
Fiona McDonald’s exclusive interview with Heather Lishman is now available to watch on YouTube:
2022 is a special year for Millbrook as it sees the company celebrate 30 years’ in organising first-class medical education. Millbrook Medical Conferences prides itself on actively contributing to medical education by providing an accessible and compliant conference and event management platform for healthcare professionals.
Fiona was virtually interviewed by Heather. Amongst a range of other topics, the two discussed the changes to the industry and conferences over the last three decades, whilst also reflecting on how Millbrook has grown from an initial concept that included just a handful of events a year to its current status as a leading UK-based PCO (Professional Conference Organiser) for Medical Education.
Fiona McDonald, winner of the prestigious BCIS Lifetime Achievement Award, set up Millbrook Medical Conferences in 1992 whilst working in the NHS with demand from colleagues looking to run medical education events, but not knowing how to organise such meetings.
Fast-forward 30 years and Millbrook is an award-winning company that has grown to a team of 11, managing up to 40 face-to-face, hybrid and fully virtual meetings a year from 50-5,000 delegates, attracting global participation. Millbrook’s continued success is borne through understanding the requirements of the organisers, delegates and sponsors.
What’s more, in 2018, Millbrook launched sister company Millbrook Medical Logistics, which offers an effective solution to the preparation of educational grants, booking compliant travel, hotel accommodation and processing conference registration.
Millbrook isn’t stopping there though; the company has exciting plans for the next year, which will all be revealed soon!
Millbrook is going from strength-to-strength, having recently been named as ‘Lockdown Hero’ in the 2020 ABPCO Excellence Awards, which reward excellence and professionalism in the world of association events, recognising professional conference organisers and event industry partners for their contributions to the industry. In 2021, Millbrook was extremely proud to have been shortlisted within the ‘Best Conference by an Agency Conference Organiser’ category for BCIS’s ACI Virtual Experience.
Over the 30 years, Millbrook has built up its workforce, continually investing and supporting every team member. In the interview with Heather, Fiona credited her colleagues for getting the business to where it is today and the positive workplace culture. Of the Millbrook team, Dominic Legate, Matt Daly and Lizzie Head are recognised as Associate Members.
ABPCO is a leading UK membership organisation for professional conference and event organisers working in-house and for agencies across the corporate, public, association and other not-for-profit sectors. Selected following the demonstration of experience and on peer assessment, membership gives individual organisers unique credibility amongst clients, suppliers and competitors alike.
Fiona McDonald’s exclusive interview with Heather Lishman is now available to watch on YouTube:
2022 is a special year for Millbrook as it sees the company celebrate 30 years’ in organising first-class medical education. Millbrook Medical Conferences prides itself on actively contributing to medical education by providing an accessible and compliant conference and event management platform for healthcare professionals.
Fiona was virtually interviewed by Heather. Amongst a range of other topics, the two discussed the changes to the industry and conferences over the last three decades, whilst also reflecting on how Millbrook has grown from an initial concept that included just a handful of events a year to its current status as a leading UK-based PCO (Professional Conference Organiser) for Medical Education.
Fiona McDonald, winner of the prestigious BCIS Lifetime Achievement Award, set up Millbrook Medical Conferences in 1992 whilst working in the NHS with demand from colleagues looking to run medical education events, but not knowing how to organise such meetings.
Fast-forward 30 years and Millbrook is an award-winning company that has grown to a team of 11, managing up to 40 face-to-face, hybrid and fully virtual meetings a year from 50-5,000 delegates, attracting global participation. Millbrook’s continued success is borne through understanding the requirements of the organisers, delegates and sponsors.
What’s more, in 2018, Millbrook launched sister company Millbrook Medical Logistics, which offers an effective solution to the preparation of educational grants, booking compliant travel, hotel accommodation and processing conference registration.
Millbrook isn’t stopping there though; the company has exciting plans for the next year, which will all be revealed soon!
Millbrook is going from strength-to-strength, having recently been named as ‘Lockdown Hero’ in the 2020 ABPCO Excellence Awards, which reward excellence and professionalism in the world of association events, recognising professional conference organisers and event industry partners for their contributions to the industry. In 2021, Millbrook was extremely proud to have been shortlisted within the ‘Best Conference by an Agency Conference Organiser’ category for BCIS’s ACI Virtual Experience.
Over the 30 years, Millbrook has built up its workforce, continually investing and supporting every team member. In the interview with Heather, Fiona credited her colleagues for getting the business to where it is today and the positive workplace culture. Of the Millbrook team, Dominic Legate, Matt Daly and Lizzie Head are recognised as Associate Members.
ABPCO is a leading UK membership organisation for professional conference and event organisers working in-house and for agencies across the corporate, public, association and other not-for-profit sectors. Selected following the demonstration of experience and on peer assessment, membership gives individual organisers unique credibility amongst clients, suppliers and competitors alike.
Fiona McDonald’s exclusive interview with Heather Lishman is now available to watch on YouTube:
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.”
2022 is a special year for Millbrook as it sees the company celebrate 30 years’ in organising first-class medical education. Millbrook Medical Conferences prides itself on actively contributing to medical education by providing an accessible and compliant conference and event management platform for healthcare professionals.
Fiona was virtually interviewed by Heather. Amongst a range of other topics, the two discussed the changes to the industry and conferences over the last three decades, whilst also reflecting on how Millbrook has grown from an initial concept that included just a handful of events a year to its current status as a leading UK-based PCO (Professional Conference Organiser) for Medical Education.
Fiona McDonald, winner of the prestigious BCIS Lifetime Achievement Award, set up Millbrook Medical Conferences in 1992 whilst working in the NHS with demand from colleagues looking to run medical education events, but not knowing how to organise such meetings.
Fast-forward 30 years and Millbrook is an award-winning company that has grown to a team of 11, managing up to 40 face-to-face, hybrid and fully virtual meetings a year from 50-5,000 delegates, attracting global participation. Millbrook’s continued success is borne through understanding the requirements of the organisers, delegates and sponsors.
What’s more, in 2018, Millbrook launched sister company Millbrook Medical Logistics, which offers an effective solution to the preparation of educational grants, booking compliant travel, hotel accommodation and processing conference registration.
Millbrook isn’t stopping there though; the company has exciting plans for the next year, which will all be revealed soon!
Millbrook is going from strength-to-strength, having recently been named as ‘Lockdown Hero’ in the 2020 ABPCO Excellence Awards, which reward excellence and professionalism in the world of association events, recognising professional conference organisers and event industry partners for their contributions to the industry. In 2021, Millbrook was extremely proud to have been shortlisted within the ‘Best Conference by an Agency Conference Organiser’ category for BCIS’s ACI Virtual Experience.
Over the 30 years, Millbrook has built up its workforce, continually investing and supporting every team member. In the interview with Heather, Fiona credited her colleagues for getting the business to where it is today and the positive workplace culture. Of the Millbrook team, Dominic Legate, Matt Daly and Lizzie Head are recognised as Associate Members.
ABPCO is a leading UK membership organisation for professional conference and event organisers working in-house and for agencies across the corporate, public, association and other not-for-profit sectors. Selected following the demonstration of experience and on peer assessment, membership gives individual organisers unique credibility amongst clients, suppliers and competitors alike.
Fiona McDonald’s exclusive interview with Heather Lishman is now available to watch on YouTube:
But of course, there is much more to it than that.
The need to attend a conference is as strong as ever despite all the financial challenges that are currently in place and the scrutiny that healthcare professionals are under, but why is this so? Why is it so important that 11,000 healthcare professionals are prepared to travel from around the globe to attend a conference in San Diego? The answer is clear.
There is a need for that conference. There is a need to bring all those physicians together for a limited period of time to garner knowledge and information, to exchange ideas. To make new acquaintances. To build life-long working relationships. To put a face to a name. To discuss your own or someone else’s ideas. And, of course, to be educated.
For industry of course, the answers again are plentiful and similar. Meeting new customers, key opinion leaders, the future generation. Exchanging of ideas, demonstrating your products. Forging new contacts.
There are many reasons for holding a conference and there is no doubt that you cannot replace the experience of real life conference attendance, on your computer screen.
With the changes that have evolved in the workplace for both healthcare professionals and its associated industry over the past few years, organisers of healthcare educational events must recognise the changing needs of their delegates and sponsors and adapt accordingly. Balance does need to be introduced and working alongside digital providers to provide choice for the delegate as well as ensuring a financially satisfactory and accessible event must now be high on the organiser’s list of considerations when embarking on a new project.
Millbrook Medical Conferences and its sister company Millbrook Medical Logistics, recognise the need for organic growth and are committed to being part of the new era of conferencing but most importantly, Millbrook embraces change and the new challenges it brings.
As a recognised market leader, our new website gives you, at the click of a button, the opportunity to find, attend or organise conferences relative to your sector. Millbrook Medical Conferences will deliver the highest quality conference experience and will work to your bespoke requirements.
