According to Dallmer and Thedens (1975) congresses can indeed be used as marketing instruments, and do “have the benefit of a direct communication” (1975, p. 447). In the past decades, by lavish entertainments and best practices of pharmaceutical companies, medical congresses unfortunately have been misused for exactly that: pure marketing- and manipulation instruments. By means of the underlying main question "Do medical congresses have a future?" this paper shows (1) whether there is an interest for physicians to attend such congresses, (2) what the best practice of the health care industry is and (3) gives hints on what the positioning of some congresses are.

In order to find appropriate answers to the above mentioned research objectives, the data collection of this research -next to secondary data from journal articles, reports and books- contains primary data from a total of 15 semi-structured interviews from industry experts, one congress participation, one structured questionnaire and one additional phone conversation. After collection of the data, this raw data was then being analysed, compared, and processed into useful, reasonable and meaningful information that allows to indicate, i.e. infer, or (even better) to answer the subquestions complementing the principal research question “Do medical congresses have a future?”. For that, transcriptions of the recorded interviews have been made and narrative analyses as well as template analyses have been conducted.

This qualitative research shows, that there is an interest for physicians to attend medical congresses. Main factors constitute networking & exchange, CME (also for credits), the obtainment of insights into latest research and clinical study findings and new guidelines in therapeutic and administrative methods. Also, next to physicians' best-practices also best practices of medical journalists, the pharma industry and congress organizers have been explored. Ultimately research showed, that currently there is an incredible number of congresses taking place leading to numerous, unfavourable, repeititons of contents. Also, there are different formats being applied to medical congresses matching the distinct preferences and needs of the individual medical discipline. However, the trends affecting and emerging at medical congresses is the increasing complexity of the medical field and the medical science in general, the application of online tools and artificial intelligence. The latter, however, is still in its very early stages. Also the importance of socializing is being credited with more room for breaks and off-venue activities.That deeper understanding in the best practices of medical congresses and its stakeholders will enable the client to better design the format of future medical congresses while considering their different finesse and distinct expectations. Also trends in the industry and their applicability onto medical congresses is being understood.