With the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019, the world found itself in a pandemic. Everything started to change suddenly. On order to comply with the recommendations on social distancing, the formats of the activities that have taken place in our lives so far have also had to change. Face-to-face meetings have started to be replaced by online meetings, and the need for reviewing infrastructure preparations for these sorts of activities has emerged. The 90th EGPRN was one of the first meeting which adapted to this new reality and was held on October 16-17, 2020, as our first virtual meeting.
Two hundred twenty-one delegates from over 24 countries attended the 90th virtual meeting. The largest number of registered delegates were from Turkey, Germany and Spain. We also had participants from far away, outside the European region, such as China, Tunisia, and Nigeria.
The main theme of the congress was planned as "Digital Medicine and E-Health". Coincidentally, the theme served as a good starting point to reflect on the digital transformation experienced during the pandemic. Several areas were explored, including e-health literacy, electronic health records, remote consultations and virtual care, computer-based applications, and digital therapeutics.
Due to the ongoing recommendation for social distancing, the next meeting, held on May 2021, was also virtual. Prompted by the theme (“Closing evidence gaps in general practice / family medicine"), we identified gaps of evidence and discussed ways in which problems related to evidence gaps in general practice and family medicine could be researched and rectified.
Unfortunately, in these virtual events we could not hold the Blue Dot Coffee online which is usually held face to face for young researchers (who attend for the first time at the meeting) to meet the senior researchers and be welcomed as part of the research group. We could not also hold the practice visits.
We are now excited to share that EGPRN’s upcoming meeting will be in-person, and are looking forward for a lively scientific discussion. Between 14-17 October 2021, we will meet in Halle Germany, for the 93rd EGPRN meeting, under the theme "Fostering clinical research in general practice and family medicine".