Rethinking the role of healthcare meeting planners from ‘executors’ to decision architects. Photo Credit: iStock/Jacob Wackerhausen
With meeting flow efficiency compromised in a traditional healthcare meeting model characterised by reactive planning in a multi-stakeholder system, industry leaders are advocating for a shift in recognising planners as decision architects rather than “executors”.
That is according to the Healthcare Planning, Design and Strategy report, published following Radisson Hotel Group’s two annual industry workshops. The most recent summit brought together 75 professionals from pharmaceutical companies, healthcare agencies, venues and production specialists.
The report describes the industry's progress over the past year as a shift “from conversation to method”, with participants working to identify challenges, then translating broad ideas into practical frameworks that can be applied.
A flow problem
One of the strongest themes to emerge from the workshops was that many of the frustrations experienced by meeting planners stem from objectives being clarified too late, decisions arriving too slowly, and re-work caused by misalignment.
According to discussions during the workshop, as much as 40% to 60% of planning time can be consumed by reactive, non-value-creating activity.
The report argues this represents a “flow problem”.
Instead of simply asking how teams can work faster, it suggests organisations should examine why so much planning effort is diverted into chasing approvals, correcting misalignment and managing avoidable complexity before value can be created.
To support this shift, the workshop introduced the Meeting Flow Efficiency Ratio (MFER), a proposed metric that measures the proportion of planning time spent creating value – decisions, stakeholder alignment, risk mitigation, experience design, and commercial optimisation – compared with time lost to rework and administrative friction.
Using a hypothetical planning scenario, the report suggests organisations applying Lean, Agile and Sprint principles could substantially increase value-creating work while reducing overall planning hours.
The workshop outlined:
Lean challenges to ask: what in this process is not creating value?
Six Sigma asks: where is variation creating risk or inconsistency?
Agile introduces a rhythm: how do we learn earlier, and adapt sooner?
Sprint thinking changes the dynamic entirely: how do we take control of the narrative, rather than reacting to it?
From ‘executors’ to decision architects
The report suggests these changes are also reshaping the role of the healthcare meeting planner.
As planning becomes increasingly centred on methodology and decision design, planners are moving beyond coordinating logistics to influencing how meetings are conceived, structured and delivered.
Rather than executing decisions made elsewhere, planners are increasingly expected to align stakeholders, facilitate better decision-making, and design planning processes that reduce friction from the outset.
The report describes this evolution as a shift towards the planner becoming a "decision architect" – someone responsible not only for operational delivery, but for creating the conditions that enable meetings to achieve their educational, scientific and organisational objectives.
Healthcare meetings planning as a science
The findings also reinforce a broader message carried over from the inaugural 2025 workshop: that healthcare meetings deserve to be recognised as a specialist discipline with its own methodologies, frameworks and measures of success.
As regulatory requirements, stakeholder expectations and programme complexity continue to increase, participants argued that structured meeting design will become increasingly important in delivering consistent outcomes.
The workshops represent an ongoing effort to help establish a common language and evidence base for healthcare meeting planning. While the report acknowledges that the discipline is still taking shape, it suggests the industry is beginning to move beyond recognising the problem towards developing practical methods to solve it.