Digital RDD 2020 opened on April 26 at 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time — exactly when the meeting would have opened had it been held in California. After being forced to cancel the California meeting due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the meeting organizers, presenters, and exhibitors scrambled to come up with a digital version of the conference on short notice.
Most of the originally scheduled talks, including the plenary lecture, are available as recorded slide presentations, and the vast majority of the accepted posters are on display as well. In some cases, however, only the abstract may be available. Delegates are taking advantage of the opportunity to ask questions of presenters through a Q&A function, and a messaging app allows attendees to contact poster authors and other delegates.
In the digital exhibition, most of the companies had posted a “digital exhibition table” by the second week of the meeting, with approaches ranging from a simple link to the company’s web site or a pre-existing handout to web pages or attachments fully customized for the digital meeting.
Organizers have attempted to maintain some sense of normalcy, sending emails suggesting the talks to be viewed each day; and even videos of the committee members enjoying the traditional RDD ice cream break and presentation of the Peter R. Byron Graduate Student Award.
Unlike a normal RDD meeting, the Digital RDD 2020 runs for several months, through June 30, 2020, and registration remains open for anyone who still wishes to attend.
Awards
Digital RDD 2020 got underway with the announcement of the 2020 Charles G. Thiel Award winner, Jeff Weers of Respira Therapeutics. Although the formal presentation will be postponed until a future RDD meeting, Weers unofficially accepted the award remotely.
Weers was also selected to present his poster “The AOS DPI: A Capsule-based Dry Powder Inhaler With Four Distinct Dispersion Elements” in the Posters on the Podium session. In his talk, he describes development of Respira’s axial oscillating sphere (AOS) DPI, where the DPI mouthpiece incorporates an aerosol engine that includes a bead that oscillates inside a chamber in the mouthpiece to improve powder dispersion.
