On 14–16 December 2021, Sechenov University hosted the QS Subject Focus Summit Medicine 2021. This English-language online event was organised in partnership with QS Quacquarelli Symonds. The theme of the summit was “Barriers Come Down: Exploring a New Paradigm in Medical Education, Research, and Healthcare.” The agenda of the summit was divided into three tracks: Medicine: Challenges, Vision, and Future; Reimagining Global Healthcare; Digitalisation and Humanities in Medical Research, Education, and Healthcare.

The conference featured a number of distinguished speakers, including:

Mikhail Murashko, Minister of Health of the Russian Federation;

Petr Glybochko, Rector of Sechenov University;

Malcolm Grant, Chancellor of the University of York (UK) and Former Chair of NHS England;

Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, Director of the Division of Country Health Policies and Systems (Europe) at the WHO;

Janet Diaz, Network Leader of the Case Management Team at the WHO Health Emergencies Programme;

Piero Olliaro, Professor of Poverty Related Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford (UK) and Director of Science at the ISARIC Global Support Centre;

Oleg Salagay, Deputy Minister of Health of the Russian Federation;

Andrey Svistunov, First Vice-Rector of Sechenov University;

Kirill Kaem, Senior Vice-President for Innovations at Skolkovo Foundation;

Irina Markovina, Director of the Institute of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication at Sechenov University.

Overall, we had 28 speakers — 68% from Europe, 29% from Asia, and 3% from North America. There were 32% women and 68% men among the speakers.

We are happy to report that the summit attracted more than 300 attendees from 44 countries. Russian viewers were the most represented group (38.5%), followed by India (10.5%), Singapore (6%), and Indonesia (5%). In general, the geography of the attendees included Europe (52%), Asia (37%), Middle East (4%), North America (4%), Africa (2%), and South America (1%).

On average, each attendee spent 90 minutes on the conference platform per day.

According to the survey feedback from the delegates, the themes covered at the summit were ranked 10/10, and content curation earned 9.7/10. All other aspects of the conference — including visual and audio quality, event timing, ease of platform use, and pre-event communication — earned 9/10 or more.

The visitors also had access to virtual promotional booths. In total, the booths were visited 125 times, 73 documents were downloaded, and the total number of unique video viewers was 1043.