In 2010, the AANS became the first North American medical association to hold its annual scientific meeting utilizing a fully integrated app delivered via the iPod touch®. Building on the robust capabilities of that conference-specific app, the AANS has developed a more expansive, year-round membership application that will prove to be an indispensible tool for anyone in the neurosurgical community.

Content from the most recent annual scientific meeting is just one of many areas contained within this new year-round app. In fact, going forward, this new resource will be the tool that attendees need in order to access meeting content from future annual conferences. The same functions that attendees are accustomed to receiving – including access to program guides, floor maps, exhibitor listings, social venues and more – will continue to be provided.

Additional features contained within this year-round app include:
• A news feed containing topics of interest to those in neurosurgical medicine
• Notification of new articles posted to AANS Neurosurgeon
• Listings of upcoming educational courses and offerings
• Articles from current and past issues of the Journal of Neurosurgery Publishing Group
• Access to AANSconnect, the members-only online social community where ideas, experiences, cases and more can be shared amongst one’s peers
• A mobile-friendly version of the AANS website
• Access to MyAANS.org
• Quick links to access the AANS Online Career Center and AANS Marketplace

About AANS
Founded in 1931 as the Harvey Cushing Society, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) is a scientific and educational association with over 8,000 members worldwide. The AANS is dedicated to advancing the specialty of neurological surgery in order to provide the highest quality of neurosurgical care to the public. All Active members of the AANS are board certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, or the Mexican Council of Neurological Surgery, A.C.

About PARLIANT
Ottawa-based Parliant Corporation is a long time Apple developer, winning the Macworld Expo "Best of Show" award -- twice and the Editor's Choice for "Best Product of the Year" from MacWorld Magazine. Parliant also won OCRI's "Best Product of the Year" in 2007 for their Mac based computer telephony products. CEO Kevin Ford was a speaker on the business side of iPhone applications development at Macworld EXPO 2010. Parliant's Conference Companion can be re-skinned and filled with data for your conference in a few weeks.

WARNING!
While the application is small, the conference data is large. The first time you run the application it will download all the conference data. On a Wi-Fi network that first download can take some time. Be sure you are on a Wi-Fi network and not using your cellular data connection. This data is stored on the device so that when you run the app it will start instantly, then in the background, check with the server for data updates. In the event of networking problems, just relaunch the app later and it will recommence the download from where it left off.