Hybrid success for NICE

"Working with Silverstream really helped us to elevate our virtual event offering, the additional professional branding and production support they brought helped us move seamlessly between speakers and produce a slick representation of our brand." - Sian Corrigan, Senior Manager Events & Branding

As the COVID pandemic took hold, NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) urgently needed to keep healthcare workers up to date with the latest treatments to save lives.  The process of fast-tracking guidelines was a sign of how rapidly modern medical regulation needed to respond.

Those learnings fed into NICE’s 5 Year Strategy review, which they planned to launch at a major event in London in April 2021.  But the delta variant forced NICE to move to a virtual launch.

They needed the launch to be accessible, with health correspondents and medics able to interrogate the NICE officials.  

Silverstream felt it was important that the event felt like it came from a real place, so they created a virtual set, with the NICE branding.  The event was hosted by a specialist social affairs journalist, Richard Vize, who presented in front of a greenscreen in his dining room. The Health Minister, Lord Bethall, appeared live from his office in Whitehall and the management team appeared from home via TV screens in the virtual set.

The Chair and the CEO of NICE both had support visuals for their presentations, and these were displayed as part of the virtual studio.

“I thought the virtual platform was very impressive and professional.” - Attendee 

The entire event was live and streamed via Silverstream’s bespoke virtual event platform.  This gave viewers a feed of the live videos and a chat facility where they could submit their questions. There were also download buttons to access biogs of the speakers and the strategy document itself. 

NICE wanted the event to be as accessible as possible, so Silverstream ran two separate live streams – one with live subtitles delivered by remote stenographers working from home.  Viewers had the option to watch the main feed or the subtitled feed. 

When the event finished both versions of the live record were quickly edited and made available to view on NICE’s YouTube channel by the same afternoon.