October 16, 2025 •Array Team
Attendees create a personalized and meaningful experience for themselves when they are engaged throughout an entire meeting. This continuous engagement also promotes knowledge transfer and retention while generating insights that can benefit stakeholders’ strategic business decisions. Disengagement, on the other hand, is an obstacle to success and is particularly detrimental at life sciences meetings because attendees miss critical information if they veer away from what’s being discussed. It’s important, then, to design an attendee journey for your health care providers that includes the right types of opportunities for engagement as well as strategies to avoid common roadblocks that can spur disengagement along the way.
Disengagement Defined
Audience engagement can fluctuate to the point where attendees become “disengaged.” This is when they tune out what is being said or ignore presented content. When that happens, they also stop participating with interactive elements such as polling, Q&A, or note-taking. Many factors can cause disengagement, such as difficulty using technology, distraction, boredom, confusion, or not feeling heard or valued. While every meeting varies, disengagement rates in the life sciences industry range from 10 to 40 percent. Unsurprisingly, it is particularly high in sessions that are less interactive or after breaks, lunch, and later in the day.
Choose the Vehicle
The first potential roadblock to engagement takes place right at the beginning of the meeting, when your audience chooses whether to pay attention to the introduction and adopt your chosen interactive meeting technology. For in-person life sciences meetings, anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of attendees normally download meeting technology. This is closer to the low end for medical or scientific congresses where information is available elsewhere, such as in printed materials or websites. Based on these numbers, the best-case scenario is having nearly half of the audience disengaged from the outset.
Studies and post-event surveys from life sciences meetings frequently report higher levels of engagement when managed devices are provided to all attendees. Managed devices are designed to be easy-to-use, distraction-free, provide a consistent experience for all attendees, and have immediate troubleshooting or on-site support. They are also preloaded with presentation slides and supporting materials for the meeting, while incorporating a multitude of interactive functionality such as polling, digital Q&A, surveys, and gamification. Unlike meeting apps attendees download to their personal devices, managed devices are free of the distractions of personal or work texts, emails, and any other apps that can quickly and easily steer people away from meeting content.
Get Off to a Strong Start
Engagement is highest at the beginning of a meeting, when audiences are fresh and intrigued. This is an excellent opportunity to present critical information and key educational topics—while minds are sharp! Early in the meeting, it’s also a good idea to do an icebreaker poll to show attendees how they can have a say in the conversation. This can be followed by a poll to learn their thoughts and opinions on topics that will be discussed. Similarly, conduct pre-tests at this time that can be combined with post-tests to assess whether learning took place.
To keep attendees on an engaged journey, don’t underestimate the importance of referencing polling results. Otherwise, you’ll run into another obstacle: polling insignificance. Meeting organizers are often tempted to encourage (or even instruct) their speakers to incorporate a certain number of polls in their sessions to spur engagement, but this can backfire. If polling is used frequently but doesn’t seem to have an impact on the session, people will feel that either their time was wasted, or their opinion wasn’t valuable (or both). They could also just develop survey fatigue and refuse to answer more questions. Instead, work with and encourage speakers to use polling to guide how they approach certain topics during their presentations. Ideally, they also should have talking points prepared for the different potential polling results so they can comment on the audience’s answers.
Another best practice for polling is to have the speaker encourage participation and allow enough time for responses. Of course, easy access to polling is also critical. Hosting polling on the same technology as the rest of the meeting materials is the easiest way for people to respond in the time allowed and doesn’t risk taking them off topic (such as via a QR code or other distracting source). Finally, make sure your Wi-Fi is reliable and the bandwidth is ample, or even the most motivated attendees won’t be able to share their responses!
Allow for Pit Stops
Studies of adults show that attention begins to wane after about 45–60 minutes of continuous content without an opportunity for interaction, discussion, or a break. Life sciences meetings often need to focus on topics that are dense with new information or require a lot of critical thinking (such as scientific or regulatory content), which can accelerate fatigue. Try to break up the cognitive density of sessions so the most challenging are never back-to-back and schedule breaks no more than an hour apart.
Chart an Interesting Course
Healthcare professionals attend meetings because there is perceived value, whether this is satisfying a requirement, learning more about a topic of interest, or a combination of both. Meetings must meet audience expectations to avoid disengagement.
Sessions that are highly relevant to the attendees’ roles, responsibilities, or interests have more active engagement than those that seem to be less applicable. Consider sending a survey to registrants prior to the meeting to gain a better understanding of their roles and responsibilities and possibly gauge interest in topics on the agenda. This insight can then be used to tailor content to the audience as well as plan sessions strategically throughout the day. Most interesting topics can be scheduled at times when engagement typically wanes, such as after breaks and in the afternoon, or even after presentations that are less interactive.
In investigator meetings, sessions covering study protocol, procedures, and safety reporting or compliance often bring about high engagement since they have a direct impact on a clinical trial’s success. Conversely, topics that can be seen as administrative or providing background experience drops in participation.
The Boredom Detour
A presentation that doesn’t naturally invite participation can cause audiences to disengage. Since they likely have one or more personal devices on hand, this may lead them to check texts, emails, or other online distractions. Attendees will be more engaged with a dynamic speaker who uses interesting visuals and offers opportunities to interact. Encourage presenters to keep lectures short, use clear visuals, and adopt two-way communication, such as through polling or even snap polls—quick pop-up questions that simply ask them to rate or rank a topic—so the audience has a vested interest in the session.
Enable always-on digital Q&A so attendees can submit questions at will, then make sure the moderator answers them promptly (even if only to say they’ll be sure to get them an answer later). Since one of the causes of disengagement is feeling unheard or underappreciated, simply recognizing someone can help keep them engaged.
The Fatigue Roadblock
One of the times when disengagement rates jump is after breaks. This is particularly true of lunch, when a temporary drop in blood sugar can cause fatigue. Among the simplest approaches is to plan for interesting, interactive sessions or those with the most dynamic speakers immediately after attendees return from a break.
A best practice is to deploy gamification after each break. Gamification that takes place at intervals throughout the meeting keeps attendees focused and waiting for the next opportunity to compete simply by responding.
Getting Everyone to the Destination
Regardless of how interesting and engaging the beginning of the day is, audiences naturally struggle to maintain their enthusiasm toward the end of the meeting. Finish the day strong with some of the best practices mentioned above. Keep the user-friendly engagement features going by making sure speakers encourage attendees to ask questions, answer polls, and even save or make note of slides with the most important takeaways. Before the meeting ends, take the opportunity to find out how to improve and disengagement-proof the next meeting with a survey. Include questions such as “Were there sessions in which you lost focus or interest?”
Ultimately, avoiding disengagement in a life sciences meeting requires a strategy for avoiding the potential causes of distraction, fatigue, boredom, and lack of purpose or not being valued. Sessions that thoughtfully incorporate opportunities to engage, well-timed breaks, gamification, and dynamic speakers can keep attendees on course through the end.
WCG Array can help you decide which engagement features to use at what times to achieve the participation you need. Reach out today to get started!