In case your time is short:
The AAOS Annual Meeting 2026 (March 2–6 in New Orleans) is one of the world’s largest orthopedic meetings. Success at this five-day event takes more than just showing up.
Here's how to maximize your impact:
Step 1: Start planning now
With hundreds of sessions across five days, your outreach should begin 4-5 months before the event. Segment your orthopedic KOLs by subspecialty (spine, sports medicine, joint replacement, trauma, pediatric, etc.) and start personalized invitations this fall.
Step 2: Navigate the unique AAOS structure
Unlike smaller specialty meetings, ACC features distinct tracks for interventional cardiology, structural heart, electrophysiology, heart failure, and prevention. Map your team's presence across these clinical domains to maximize meaningful connections.
Step 3: Leverage the new 60-minute session format
For 2026, AAOS has standardized most sessions to 60 minutes based on attendee feedback. This creates more opportunities to attend different sessions without overlap—plan your schedule accordingly to maximize KOL interactions.
Step 4: Don't miss the Innovation Theater and OrthoLive
The expansive Exhibit Hall features live demonstrations in the Innovation Theater and hands-on experiences in OrthoLive. These interactive venues offer unique opportunities to engage with forward-thinking surgeons interested in the latest technologies.
Step 5: Use the enhanced mobile app with turn-by-turn navigation
AAOS 2026 debuts blue dot navigation similar to Google Maps, using Bluetooth beacons throughout the convention center. Equip your team with the app to efficiently navigate between sessions and maximize valuable face time with KOLs.
Teams using ExtendMed's Health Expert Connect™ platform consistently report deeper, more valuable KOL connections at major events like AAOS—compared to the fragmented, manual approaches many teams still rely on. Want to see how we can help elevate your AAOS strategy? Contact us for a free personalized demo.
We've been helping pharmaceutical companies navigate medical congresses for years, and AAOS Annual Meeting presents unique opportunities for teams looking to connect with orthopedic thought leaders.
As the world's largest orthopedic meeting, AAOS brings together 30,000+ professionals spanning every subspecialty—from pediatric spine surgeons to sports medicine specialists to trauma experts managing complex fractures.
The sheer scale and diversity make strategic planning essential. You can't just show up with a booth and hope for the best—not when your target KOLs might be scattered across multiple venues in the massive Morial Convention Center, attending any of the dozens of concurrent sessions.
This is exactly why we built Health Expert Connect™—to help teams manage this complexity without drowning in spreadsheets, emails, and compliance concerns.
In this guide, we'll share our playbook for AAOS and show how an engagement platform can help you maximize the ROI on events like this.
Inside the AAOS Annual Meeting
Before diving into strategy, it's worth understanding what makes AAOS unique among medical meetings.
The orthopedic community is highly interconnected yet subspecialized. Many surgeons have trained at the same fellowship programs, collaborate on research, or serve together on specialty society committees. This creates both opportunities and challenges for engagement.
Unlike some specialties, orthopedic surgeons often practice across multiple domains. Your target joint replacement surgeon might also perform trauma call, teach residents, and conduct outcomes research. This means simple categorization won't work—your outreach strategy needs to reflect the full scope of each KOL's expertise and interests.
That's where platforms like Health Expert Connect™ really shine. Our system lets teams tag KOLs with multiple attributes—subspecialty focus, procedural expertise, research interests, institutional affiliations, engagement history—and build dynamic segments for more targeted outreach.
No more juggling separate spreadsheets for "spine surgeons" vs. "sports medicine docs" when the same physician may be deeply involved in both.
ExtendMed’s Health Expert Connect™ platform efficiently consolidates and manages multiple lists of healthcare professionals, ensuring a smooth event invitation process.
Educational formats:
- Instructional Course Lectures (ICLs): In-depth, hands-on sessions covering clinical techniques
- Paper Presentations: Latest research findings and clinical outcomes
- Symposia: Panel discussions on cutting-edge topics
- OrthoDome: HD/4K video presentations of surgical techniques on the big screen
- Orthopaedic Video Theater (OVT): Peer-reviewed surgical technique videos with CME
- Ask an Expert: Case-based learning opportunities
- Flash Five: Rapid-fire 5-minute presentations on hot topics
Subspecialty focus areas:
- Joint Replacement: Hip, knee, shoulder arthroplasty
- Sports Medicine: ACL reconstruction, arthroscopy, biologics
- Spine: Deformity correction, minimally invasive techniques
- Trauma: Fracture management, polytrauma care
- Pediatrics: Growth modulation, congenital conditions
- Hand & Upper Extremity: Microsurgery, nerve reconstruction
- Foot & Ankle: Deformity correction, arthrodesis techniques
Each domain has its own thought leaders, session formats, and networking opportunities. A smart strategy needs to reflect this segmentation while staying flexible enough to capture valuable cross-specialty insights.
Pre-meeting strategy: the 5-month playbook
Based on our experience supporting multiple AAOS campaigns, here's when to start each planning phase. While this timeline can be compressed, these monthly milestones represent the most comfortable and proactive cadence.
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Health Expert Connect™ includes team collaboration features that keep everyone aligned:
Maximizing on-site engagement at AAOS
The Morial Convention Center in New Orleans is massive, and AAOS uses every bit of it. With the new mobile app featuring turn-by-turn navigation for 2026, your team can navigate more efficiently—but strategic planning is still essential.
Cover sessions strategically
Unlike smaller meetings where you might cover everything, AAOS's scale demands prioritization.
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Teams using Health Expert Connect™ can assign coverage efficiently and track it in real time—no more discovering that three team members attended the same session while missing others entirely.
Capture insights systematically (not ad hoc)
The biggest risk at any major congress is losing valuable insights in the chaos. Health Expert Connect™ provides structured ways to capture and share learning:
| For KOL Meetings |
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| Session Coverage |
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Navigate the Exhibit Hall strategically
The AAOS Exhibit Hall is the world's largest orthopedic marketplace. Success requires more than just booth staffing:
- OrthoLive: Hands-on demonstration areas where surgeons can try new techniques.
- Innovation Theater: Scheduled product demonstrations throughout the day
- Technical Exhibits: Over 600 companies displaying the latest technologies.
Health Expert Connect™ helps coordinate your Exhibit Hall strategy:
- Schedule shifts to ensure consistent booth coverage
- Alert relevant team members when priority KOLs check in
- Capture booth visitor information systematically
- Track competitive intelligence from other exhibitors
Track compliance accurately (and without the headaches)
Many orthopedic surgeons work at institutions with strict interaction policies. Health Expert Connect™ automates compliance management:
- Institutional spending limits tracked across your entire team.
- Proper allocation of group meal expenses.
- Sunshine Act reporting requirements handled automatically.
- Contract management for consulting arrangements.
This automation is critical at AAOS, where your team might have dozens of interactions daily across multiple venues.
Orthopedic-specific engagement opportunities
Beyond the standard playbook, AAOS offers unique venues for meaningful engagement:
- Resident & Fellow Programs — Don't overlook the next generation! The Medical Student Program, speed mentoring sessions, and resident-focused content attract ambitious future leaders. These smaller settings often yield candid insights about training gaps and practice preparation.
- Subspecialty Society Events — Many orthopedic subspecialty societies hold meetings adjacent to AAOS. Groups like the Hip Society, Knee Society, and Cervical Spine Research Society offer focused engagement opportunities with specialized thought leaders.
- International Pavilion — With attendees from over 100 countries, the International Pavilion offers opportunities to engage with global thought leaders and understand international practice patterns.
- Career Center — Beyond recruiting, this area attracts surgeons considering practice transitions—often opinion leaders looking for new opportunities to share their expertise.
Post-AAOS follow-up
This is where having a platform like Health Expert Connect™ really differentiates successful teams. While others scramble with business cards and scattered notes, our users execute systematic follow-up.
Within 24 hours of AAOS ending, you should have:
- Complete interaction records for every team member.
- Organized insights tagged by topic and strategic importance.
- Follow-up task lists automatically generated based on commitments made.
- KOL engagement scores updated based on congress interactions.
Then convert these connections into lasting relationships through:
| Immediate Actions (48 hours) |
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| Medium-term Nurturing (2-8 weeks) |
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| Long-term Relationship Building (ongoing) |
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Why an integrated platform matters at AAOS
We've watched talented medical affairs teams—experts who can discuss the latest in robotic surgery or biologics for hours—get completely overwhelmed by AAOS's operational complexity.
The pattern is predictable: Email outreach becomes spreadsheet tracking. Expense reports pile up in another system. Calendars fragment across platforms. Insights scatter across notebooks and napkins. By day three, the team is drowning in logistics instead of building relationships.
We've seen invaluable insights vanish—a conversation with a leading sports medicine surgeon about ACL graft choices, scribbled on a business card, lost in the shuffle. Teams scramble months later to reconstruct Sunshine Act reports because their manual tracking failed.
But the real tragedy is missed connections from poor coordination. An MSL schedules time with a KOL, unaware of an existing relationship. Two team members approach the same surgeon with conflicting messages. Opportunities slip away.
That's why Health Expert Connect™ brings everything together. When your KOL database, communications, schedules, insights, compliance, and expenses live in one platform, your team focuses on what matters: advancing orthopedic care through meaningful relationships.
The transformation is measurable: Instead of 60% administrative burden, teams spend that time in substantive scientific exchange. That efficiency doesn't just save time—it drives your orthopedic programs forward.
The bottom line: systematic success at AAOS
AAOS is too important and too expensive to approach haphazardly. The teams that succeed treat congress planning as an integrated process, not disconnected tasks.
Health Expert Connect™ provides the infrastructure for this systematic approach:
- Before AAOS: Organized KOL management and targeted outreach.
- During AAOS: Coordinated execution and systematic insight capture.
- After AAOS: Structured follow-up that builds lasting relationships.
Our clients consistently report:
- More meaningful KOL interactions through systematic planning.
- A reduction in administrative burden through integrated workflows.
- Total compliance accuracy through automated tracking.
- Significantly higher ROI through systematic follow-up.
But beyond metrics, what matters is this: when your team focuses on relationships instead of logistics, you achieve the real purpose of congress attendance—advancing your orthopedic pipeline through meaningful KOL engagement.
Ready to transform your AAD strategy for 2026?
Don't let another ACC pass while wrestling with spreadsheets, email chains, and manual compliance tracking. Health Expert Connect™ brings everything together in one powerful, purpose-built platform.
Contact us today to schedule your personalized demo. We'll show you exactly how Health Expert Connect™ can transform your AAD strategy, using real examples from successful cardiology congress campaigns. Because in cardiovascular medicine, relationships matter. And we're here to help you build them—systematically, compliantly, and meaningfully.
Ready to revolutionize your congress planning? Let's talk. Your KOLs—and your team—will thank you.
Currently managing congress planning across multiple disconnected systems? We'll help you centralize everything in Health Expert Connect™. Most teams are fully operational within two weeks. Schedule your demo now and see why leading pharma companies trust ExtendMed for their most important dermatology engagements.
