The BCB celebrates the connection between the medical sector and congresses with a great dinner

It is an important sector for Barcelona: the medical-scientific sector accounted for more than 250 medical and life sciences congresses in 2024. And the city hosts some of the most powerful congresses in the world, be it cardiology, oncology, pulmonology… with tens of thousands of congressmen. Events also come back several times (Cardiology, perhaps the most powerful congress in Europe, has come to the city 7 times). The medical sector accounts for 30.5% of the congresses hosted by Barcelona. And this continues: this year the congresses of EULAR (Rheumatology) with 16,000 delegates, WCLC (World Conference on Lung Cancer) with 8,000 and ECTRIMS (European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis) with 9,000 are coming.

But to achieve this, as the Barcelona Convention Bureau (BCB) highlights, the collaboration of the medical world is essential, and deserved gratitude. So the BCB has organised a grand dinner at the CCIB with 350 people from the Barcelona medical scientific community. A thank you for their support in positioning Barcelona as a destination for medical congresses, and a dinner that had not been held since 2014.

The event was attended by important players: Dr. Valentí Fuster and Dr. Josep Tabernero participated in a round table moderated by Christoph Tessmar, director of the BCB. They discussed the importance of medical congresses for global scientific development and activities that contribute to consolidating the city as a benchmark in the health sector. Connected from New York, Valentín Fuster explained the international impact of the congresses held in Barcelona, ​​and recalled the attraction of the European cardiology congress in 1992, a perfect example of the support that local doctors can provide in attracting congresses to their city. Josep Tabernero recalled something key about face-to-face events: what is important is not only what happens at the congress, but also on the sidelines, the meetings, encounters, with actors from the city, and these encounters maximize the value of the congress, its capacity to generate knowledge and research projects.

An indication of the importance of this sector for the city was the presence and intervention of Mayor Jaume Collboni who recalled the importance of the events sector and the excellence of the city in medicine… and its support for the world of science, today questioned in some parts of the world. The director of Tourisme de Barcelona, ​​Mateu Hernández, also intervened, and the event ended with a presentation by Jordi Camí, a professor specializing in clinical pharmacology and founder of the Parc de Recerca Biomèdica, on magic, what it teaches us about the functioning of the brain and what neuroscience teaches us in this field.

The event was supported by companies from the local healthcare world, showing the connection between congresses and industry: Almirall, Esteve, Grifols, Isdin, Reig Jofre, Uriach. Barcelona is the first Spanish city and the fourth in Europe in terms of scientific production, as indicated by various rankings such as that of the Nature magazine. Medical congresses not only position Barcelona: they also allow the city to be the scene of important scientific discoveries and advances.