Why ERS Congress Matters for Respiratory Care Clinicians

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The European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress 2026 in Barcelona, Spain, brought thought leaders, pioneering researchers, and clinicians from around the world together to discuss and advance respiratory care.

Panel discussions, abstracts, and presentations covered various diseases within the field, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Numerous experts and clinicians applaud and encourage frequent participation from their colleagues in conferences such as ERS to broaden their scope of practice and potentially improve outcomes for their patients. The American Journal of Managed Care^® spoke with numerous key opinion leaders focused on respiratory care at ERS to further gauge advancements and innovations being contributed to the field and why attendance is imperative for continuity.

“To be in contact with the excellence all around the world is fundamental to learn and to share experience and to understand that there are some,” said Francesca Puggioni, MD, a pulmonary allergology specialist at Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan, Italy, and a speaker at ERS.

Networking and educational resources were among the main reasons many of these clinicians cited for attending conferences like ERS, especially for younger and entry-level clinicians, said Jørgen Vestbo, MD, a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Manchester.

“That's what we call the World Village, where you can go and suddenly you can see, well, there are all these books available, there are all these online programs where you can learn things, and perhaps they hadn't quite realized at home,” he said.

From a primary care physician perspective, clinicians have so much to learn, especially with the expansion of biologics for COPD, explained Francesca Polverino, MD, PhD, a physician scientist and tenured Lester and Sue Smith Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and a speaker at the ERS Congress.

“I think that this conference, like the ATS [American Thoracic Society] or ERS, is an excellent scenario in which physicians who are not very much engaged in research or not very up-to-date or who can only look at the GOLD care recommendation can really understand where the field is going,” she said.