Newswise — WASHINGTON – AACC is pleased to announce that the organization will be able to preserve the complete 2020 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo experience for its attendees by moving the meeting to December 13-17, 2020. After carefully monitoring the ongoing global crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, the association’s leadership determined that rescheduling is the best way to safeguard the health of meeting attendees, partners, and staff, which is AACC’s number one priority. 

Originally scheduled for July 2020, the AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo showcases the research and technology that is paving the way for better clinical testing and patient care. Featuring more than 300 talks on timely healthcare topics and 800 diagnostic exhibitors, the meeting attracts 20,000 laboratory medicine professionals every year—many of whom are on the frontlines of COVID-19 testing right now. Ensuring the well-being of these essential healthcare professionals is critical, but AACC also recognizes that an in-person meeting is still the ideal format for sharing clinical laboratory science and best practices. Based on the information available at this time, the association believes that December will be a safer time for the laboratory medicine community to come together for a week of learning, networking, and technology exploration. AACC’s Annual Meeting Organizing Committee has been working all year on an outstanding educational conference and the association is committed to ensuring that the lab medicine community has access to this content.    

“Our clinical laboratory community has been courageous and even heroic in their work to ramp up testing in the face of numerous obstacles during this crisis,” said AACC President Dr. Carmen L. Wiley. “We believe that by moving the meeting to December, we can assure the health and safety of our attendees while giving our community the opportunity to come together to discuss lessons learned from this outbreak as well as the many other scientific innovations that have occurred since we were last together in 2019.” 

About AACC

Dedicated to achieving better health through laboratory medicine, AACC brings together more than 50,000 clinical laboratory professionals, physicians, research scientists, and business leaders from around the world focused on clinical chemistry, molecular diagnostics, mass spectrometry, translational medicine, lab management, and other areas of progressing laboratory science. Since 1948, AACC has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing programs that advance scientific collaboration, knowledge, expertise, and innovation. For more information, visit www.aacc.org.