Overall, the decision to hold the conferences virtually again this year is being met with what appears to be a bit of relief.
Within hours of the news that the J.P. Morgan (JPM) Healthcare Conference would be held virtually in 2022, hotel prices in San Francisco plummeted from thousands of dollars per night to a few hundred for the same rooms. Some 24 hours later, Biotech Showcase – a premier partnering event for small biotech companies – also announced its upcoming conference would be held virtually due to concerns regarding the quickly-spreading Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
“After careful consideration, Biotech Showcase made the tough but right decision to pivot to a virtual event for 2022. Our primary goal is always the safety and well-being of our team members, participating companies and individuals, as well as the broader community. As leaders in the life science sector, it is our responsibility to follow the science first and ensure that we are setting a model for other organizations in our industry and others. Biotech Showcase will not be a vector for spreading the virus so many in our industry are working so hard to identify, control and eradicate,” conference organizer Sara Demy, founder and CEO of Demy-Colton, told BioSpace.
Likewise, the 17th annual Non-Dilutive Funding Summit (NDFS) will be exclusively virtual. “We planned the event to be hybrid, and our team was very excited to travel to San Francisco and meet people face-to-face,” Meir Panzer, marketing director for Freemind Consultants, told BioSpace. “But, from the beginning we recognized the possibility that J.P. Morgan’s conference might go virtual and we prepared for it.”
The Non-Dilutive Funding Summit is a free event for life science companies, sharing funding opportunities and tips from directors of those programs (both governmental and private) to help them win funding awards.
The ramifications of the sudden switch to virtual meetings for the 2022 JPM week affect the entire biotech ecosystem, including attendees who have booked hotel rooms, meeting rooms, and flights, and the PR agencies that are arranging and coordinating many of the one-on-one meetings, but the switch to a virtual platform also presents certain opportunities.
At Biotech Showcase, for example, the one-on-one partnering sessions expanded to a 24-hour timeframe January 10-12 and again the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to facilitate meetings among individuals throughout the world. “All programming will be streamed live in Pacific Standard Time according to our already announced schedule,” Demy said. Several on-demand presentations also are available.
In terms of benefits to attendees, “All sessions will be delivered via Zoom, which means we can entertain questions,” Demy added. “We want to make this as close as possible to an in-person experience. Viewers can tune in to more than one session, too. Finally, we are looking to add some fun components,” which will be announced later. “Our overarching concern is to make this virtual environment as beneficial to all participants as we possibly can.”
As Kimberly Ha, CEO and founder of KKH Advisors, told BioSpace, “The advantage is now more people can register and attend, as opposed to if the panels were held in person.”
At the Non-Dilutive Funding Summit, “The number of people attending could be higher than in the years prior to the pandemic, as the event will be easily accessible all over the world,” Panzer said.
At Biotech Showcase, “Since we announced we were going virtual, our registrations and numbers of presenting companies have continued to climb,” Demy said. “The response to our going virtual has been overwhelmingly positive.”
Ha said she had “a number of clients who wanted to participate at Biotech Showcase but couldn’t attend in person because of travel and quarantine issues (especially clients in Asia). Now that the panels are virtual, they can participate as potential speakers, even though they couldn’t originally attend in person.”
BIO – the Biotechnology Innovation Organization – is equally optimistic about this year’s virtual venues. Its BIO One-on-One Partnering platform enables companies to switch easily from on-site to virtual meetings and features embedded Zoom links for convenience, Theresa Brady, managing director of stakeholder engagement, told BioSpace.
“As of Dec. 13, we’re seeing 34% more registered investors, 28% more meeting requests and 22% more scheduled meetings than at the same point last year,” Brady said. “The virtual environment allows for more opportunities.”
Companies can reap a benefit in terms of media coverage, too. As Ha pointed out, “There were only a handful of reporters who were originally planning to attend JPM in person before it went virtual, so now it makes it easier to schedule media interviews since everyone is going to be on Zoom again.”
Overall, the decision to hold the conferences virtually again this year is being met with what appears to be a bit of relief.
“J.P. Morgan’s decision to hold its annual Healthcare Conference virtually once again is a wise one that is appreciated by most companies, investors and journalists. It should not be seen as a fear, but as a cautious move to maintain public safety,” Ignacio Guerrero-Ros, Ph.D., senior account executive at Russo Partners, LLC told BioSpace.
“As much as we all are looking forward to returning to normal, it will likely never happen. As with many other changes brought by nature, COVID-19 is here to stay; we need to accept and adapt to that as we did in 2020 and 2021. Things will not remain virtual forever, but they will also never go back to the way they once were. The exponential growth in communications technology has allowed us to build and maintain relationships with a wide group of stakeholders from around the world, including the hiring of talent previously inaccessible due to geographical limitations,” Guerrero-Ros said.
Although the days of hopping on a plane for face-to-face investor meetings are gone and there are indications that investments in biotech may be waning, “We were all surprised last year with record investments, IPOs and SPACs,” he continued. “For the most part, it all happened virtually.”
As Guerrero-Ros pointed out, “The need for personal interaction has evolved. A virtual world allows companies, investors and journalists to have more targeted meetings that avoid the inconvenience, cost and carbon footprint of travel. While the after-hours networking will be certainly missed, most companies were already prepared for and almost expecting this scenario, so we don’t foresee that it will have any negative impact on what can still be a very fruitful conference.”
What this portends for 2023 is anyone’s guess, but Demy said she is optimistic that a year from now in-person conferences will return. “While we don’t have data showing that this fourth wave will be our last, we do have supreme confidence in science and the people behind the science to use that massive amount of information and learnings about this virus to resolve this pandemic.”
