World Live Neurovascular Conference 2024
Award-Winning Experience with Live Surgery Broadcasts & Immersive Audience Participation
🏆 2024 Event Technology Awards UK Winner:
- Best Live Streaming and Video Production
- Best use of Technology for Audience Participation
The Brief:
Every year, World Live Neurovascular Conference (WLNC) brings together the brightest minds in the neurovascular field. Participants share innovative case studies, discuss advanced medical strategies, and experience groundbreaking surgical techniques through live surgery broadcasts directly from operating rooms from around the world.
For WLNC 2024, PlayfulBits had an ambitious brief to:
- Enable over 900+ neurovascular medical experts to engage in real-time discussions.
- Produce an innovative live event to meet the dynamic needs of both presenting and operating surgeons.
- Broadcast live surgeries from five countries (USA, France, Turkey, China, Argentina) to two main event venues in Istanbul and Shanghai.
Main Stage at WLNC 2024 in Istanbul
The Challenges
WLNC represents both technical integration and creative facilitation challenges. Here are the ones that guided this project and shaped how we approached everything that followed:
Technical Integration:
- How can we coordinate multiple live neurovascular surgeries simultaneously across multiple countries and time zones?
- How can we build intelligent, reliable systems to smoothly handle live surgical broadcasts throughout the event?
- How can we dynamically respond to unpredictable live surgery discussions both on stage and from remote hospitals?
Creative Facilitation:
- How can we encourage engaging discussions among nearly a thousand participants, strengthening interaction and community?
- How can we better utilize MRI imagery to effectively support the faculty's explanations and decision-making during live neurovascular surgical sessions?
Our Solutions
Here is the suite of solutions we designed and developed for WLNC 2024:
Technical & Integration
- Global Broadcast Reliability: Cloud infrastructure as a virtual Master Control Room to manage AV production and enable real-time interactivity across continents.
- Fail-safe & Secure Network: Bonded SD-WAN solution to ensure global redundancy, security, and connectivity.
- Surgeon-friendly Technology: Remotely manageable AV systems in hospital operating rooms, allowing surgeons to monitor their on-air or off-air status via custom Tally screens and smartwatch integrations.
Creative Facilitation
- The "Spotlight Button": A tailored creative tool inviting audience members to the spotlight, empowering them to contribute to live discussions.
The Spotlight button in idle mode: The participant is ready to engage in live Q&A
The Spotlight Button’s camera and lighting integration automatically sends a live video feed to the screens when a participant takes the mic.
- Expert-controlled Facilitation: Mobile app to facilitate live voting and manage real-time Q&A.
Real-time voting brought the audience directly into the conversation
- Interactive Surgical Feeds: A custom-built Telestrator iPad application, allowing moderators real-time annotations, replays, and highlights of critical neurovascular surgical moments
A live session moderator uses the custom-built telestrator to annotate over surgical visuals in real time—one of the tools enabling precise, interactive education at WLNC 2024.
Our custom-built telestrator enabled moderators to draw, highlight, and annotate directly over live neuroimaging feeds
Red annotations created with the custom telestrator stand out on the main screens, guiding the audience through complex neurovascular anatomy and procedural decisions in real time
- AI Photo Kiosk: A generative AI-powered photo kiosk with selectable themes related to the neurovascular medical field, adding playful moments during event breaks.
The NeuralPhoto booth invited attendees to create and print their own neuro-themed portraits, adding a fun, personalised keepsake to a high-impact scientific event.
NeuralPhoto transformed participants into AI-generated heroes, wizards, and surgeons in seconds
Results & Impact
Revolutionalising Medical Education and Collaboration
Over a decade of partnership, we've transformed WLNC into the definitive global congress in neurovascular medicine.
- Technical Excellence: Successfully executed complex live surgery broadcasts from multiple international hospitals without technical disruptions.
- Audience Participation: Increased by a remarkable 35% compared to previous years.
- AI Photo Kiosk: Over 600 personalised, neuro-themed photo souvenirs were created with our generative AI-powered photo kiosk, NeuralPhoto.
- High Educational Value: WLNC 2024 earned participants 28 Continuing Medical Education (CME) points, highlighting the outstanding educational and scientific quality of the conference.
- Industry Recognition: Honoured with two prestigious Event Technology Awards for Best Live Streaming and Video Production and Best use of Technology for Audience Participation.
Over 900+ neurovascular medical experts attended the 2024 edition of WLNC in Istanbul
🚨 Nerd Alert! Here’s the Geeky Goodness:
- Cloud Infrastructure: AWS Cloud (serverless modules & global AV management)
- Connectivity: Bonded SD-WAN with multi-region redundancy (Fibre, Cable, GSM) using AWS, DigitalOcean, and MacStadium data centres
- Remote AV Management: Web-based Tally systems, smartwatches, and PTZ camera APIs
- Integration: Server application supporting MQTT, Art-Net, RS232, vMix, Canon, Birddog PTZ, and custom GPIO IoT bridge hardware
- Live Video Feeds: Zoom & NDI Integration for isolated remote feeds
- Communication: Riedel Digital Matrix Intercom for instant global communication
- Augmented Reality: Unreal Engine-powered AR stage with 4K FreeD tracked cameras
- Interactive Annotation: Custom-developed NDI Telestrator iPad App
- Audience Tech: Custom-designed and built the “Spotlight Buttons” integrated with stage lighting & moderator dashboards
- Engagement Apps: Real-time mobile apps for audience voting & Q&A
An inside look at the custom engineered and 3D-printed housing of the Spotlight Button
The Tally App dashboard gave moderators a real-time view of speaker status: who’s on air, who’s queued, and how long they’ve been live
Masthead:
- Event: World Live Neurovascular Conference (WLNC) 2024
- Location: Shanghai, China & Istanbul, Turkey
- Dates: May 7-10, 2024
- Participants: 900+ medical experts
- Countries Involved: USA, France, Turkey, China, Argentina
- Awards: Best Live Streaming and Video Production and Best use of Technology for Audience Participation
- Partners: Zenger, Kraftend
Want to dive deeper or chat specifics? Drop us a line — we love talking nerdy and creative!
