The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Qatar Foundation’s global health initiative, will hold its next summit from November 15-19 entirely online due to Covid-19.
The event aims to capitalise on the new opportunities and make it an “unprecedented experience for unprecedented times”.
Since the pandemic began, it has ensured dialogue and the exchange of perspectives and experiences about the most pressing global health issues facing global society have continued via virtual platforms.
And that approach also applies to the forthcoming flagship event in WISH calendar.
Sultana Afdhal, CEO of WISH, explained: “We are going fully virtual for WISH 2020 — our original plan was to hold a blended event, with the summit being held in its traditional location at Qatar National Convention Centre, and participants being involved remotely as well.
“Ultimately, our decision to host a fully virtual summit was driven by the global situation we are all encountering. WISH’s global community comprises many healthcare workers and leaders, who are experiencing the most complicated and busiest time of their lives this year, and by being fully virtual we are ensuring that they will still be able to participate from wherever they are in the world.
“Although they will not be physically coming to Doha this year, we want to make sure the feeling that this is a platform whose roots are in Qatar remains.
“We have always been proud of the opportunity to showcase Qatari innovation in health, and the work of Qatar Foundation, and we have been careful to ensure that people from around the world will be able to recognise it in virtual form as well,” continued Afdhal.
According to Nick Bradshaw, WISH’s director of partnerships and outreach, innovating and creating solutions to make the virtual WISH 2020 Summit as much of a success as its physical predecessors is an ongoing challenge, but an exciting one.“WISH 2020 will not be like a conference call,” he says.“It is going to be very immersive and interactive.
“People will be able to ‘virtually’ enter Qatar National Convention Centre, arriving under Maman (the spider sculpture at the heart of the venue), and will be able to enjoy the many different elements of the summit from there, with the opportunity to interact and explore exhibition spaces”. Previously held over two days, the WISH 2020 Summit will have an expanded programme spanning five days.
The main events of the summit will incorporate a mixture of panel discussions with global healthcare experts where people can not only watch but also ask questions; and exhibition spaces galleries, and booths where people can interact and meet the authors of WISH research reports.
There will also be active workshops where everybody’s voice is heard, which can be harder to achieve at a physical summit.
The thematic focus of the event will include climate change and health, and mental health. Although it was not part of the original plans for the event, Covid-19 will feature in many of the discussions taking place across five days.“WISH seeks to address global health challenges in an innovative way, and there has never been a more pressing health challenge than Covid-19,” added Bradshaw.