Accreditation at a medical conference: recording attendance verifiably

Accreditation at a medical conference is the recognition of the event by a scientific association, allowing participants to receive credits towards their professional re-registration, provided that their attendance is verifiably recorded.

For many medical conference participants, accreditation credits are one of the reasons to attend. For the organising committee, this creates an additional requirement: attendance must be accurate and traceable for each participant. A sign-in sheet at the entrance rarely provides sufficient assurance. Activo has been providing registration and access control for business events and conferences since 1997.

Accreditation starts with registration

The information you need for processing should be collected during registration, not on the day of the conference. This may include the BIG number or registration number, professional group and the association to which the credits should be assigned.

Only request these fields from participants for whom they are relevant. Speakers, exhibitors and committee members follow a different route through the registration form. You can read more about how to make this distinction in the article about requesting data during conference registration.

Recording attendance through access control

After registration, each participant receives an e-ticket with a QR code. Upon arrival, the ticket is scanned and the badge is handed over. That scan immediately serves as your attendance record. The access control at the event venue records when each participant checked in.

This is more accurate than a list on which people write down their names, and it immediately provides a digital file instead of paper that needs to be entered manually later. During the day, you can also see live how many participants have arrived.

Multiple half-days and individual programme components

Some associations award credits per half-day or per programme component. In that case, a single scan upon arrival is not sufficient and you will want to register attendance at multiple points throughout the event.

• An additional scan at the start of the afternoon or on the second day
• Scanning at the entrance to a specific session or workshop
• Registration per parallel session, linked to the session choice made during registration
• An overview for each participant of the programme components they actually attended

Participants make their session choices during registration. You can read more about how this works for parallel sessions with limited room capacity in the article about session selection at a conference.

From attendance list to processing

After the event, you have an overview containing each participant's registration details and recorded attendance. This forms the basis for the committee to submit the credits to the relevant association. Processing and awarding the credits are handled by that association; the conference platform ensures that the underlying data is complete and traceable.

Registration, sessions, abstracts and access control come together in the medical conference platform. The platform is designed with GDPR considerations in mind, which is a prerequisite for healthcare organisations and scientific associations. For organisations such as Amsterdam UMC, Activo handles this process, including on-site support.

Frequently asked questions about accreditation at a medical conference