Congratulations — you’ve been made organising secretary. Somewhere between the felicitation and your next OPD, the size of the job will land on you. This checklist is the map.
The timeline that actually works
12–18 months out — lock the city and venue (convention centre or five-star conference hotel), form committees (scientific, finance, sponsorship, hospitality), open the conference bank account, and register the conference website and email.
9–12 months out — announce dates, open early-bird registration, send first sponsorship decks to pharma and device companies, invite international faculty (their visas and calendars need the most lead time).
6 months out — freeze the scientific programme skeleton, apply for CME accreditation with the state medical council, contract AV/production and exhibition build vendors, block hotel room inventory.
3 months out — close abstract submissions, publish the programme, chase sponsorship follow-ups (most pharma budgets release in this window), finalise F&B menus per delegate count.
Final month — badge printing, registration desk rehearsal, faculty travel reconfirmation, exhibition floor marking, contingency plans for the two things that always wobble: AV and airport pickups.
After — settle accounts within 60 days, send sponsors their engagement reports, issue CME certificates, and hand the association an auditable file. This last step is what gets the next conference funded.
Budget: where the money goes and comes from
| Line | Share of budget |
|---|---|
| Venue + F&B | 35–45% |
| Faculty travel & stay | 15–20% |
| AV, production & exhibition build | 12–18% |
| Printing, kits, certificates | 5–8% |
| Registration systems & staff | 4–6% |
| Contingency | 5–10% |
Funding is the mirror image: 50–70% sponsorships and stalls, 30–50% registrations. The conferences that struggle are almost always the ones where sponsorship selling started late or was left to committee members making calls between surgeries.
The UCPMP rule every committee must know
Since UCPMP 2024 became mandatory, pharma sponsorship must flow to the association or conference account, never to individual doctors’ personal benefit — with invoices, agreements and deliverables documented. Sponsors now actively prefer conferences that offer compliant, documented packages; making compliance easy is a selling point, not a burden.
Do it yourself, or bring a conference organiser?
Everything above is doable by a committee of volunteers — it is simply a second full-time job for six months. A professional conference organiser takes the operational load (venue, delegates, faculty, production, sponsorship sales, accounts) while your committee keeps the science and every budget decision. Read how to choose a medical conference organiser in India, or request an itemised proposal from IndoMedTour — for many conferences the sponsorship revenue a professional team brings in covers its own fee.