COVID-19 and the New Shape of Cross-Border Perinatal Medicine

When the Federation of Asian and Oceania Perinatal Societies announced in April 2020 that its Tokyo congress would not go ahead, the ripple effects reached well beyond Japan's capital. Months of preparation by organising committees, hundreds of submitted abstracts, and countless travel plans evaporated within weeks. For clinicians across Australia, New Zealand, and the wider Asia-Pacific, the cancellation of FAOPS 2020 removed a vital touchpoint for sharing evidence on preterm birth, neonatal sepsis, and maternal morbidity. The event had been designed to bring together perinatal specialists under one roof alongside PREBIC AA 2020, an arrangement that had long shaped regional thinking on obstetric and neonatal care.

What followed was not a pause but a reshaping. SARS-CoV-2 forced every aspect of perinatal medicine — from bedside teaching to international trials — into unfamiliar digital territory. Within a year, the field had rebuilt its connective tissue around platforms, registries, and remote partnerships in ways that few had imagined. For Australian practitioners in particular, the experience altered how they engage with colleagues from Seoul to Suva, and laid the groundwork for a more inclusive, if less intimate, era of cross-border collaboration.

The Cancellation of FAOPS 2020 and What It Signalled

The decision to call off the Tokyo meeting, announced as international borders slammed shut and quarantine mandates took hold, marked one of the clearest acknowledgements yet of how vulnerable scientific exchange had become. Delegates who had booked flights from Sydney and Melbourne weeks earlier faced the prospect of losing registration fees, but more importantly, of missing the corridor conversations and poster sessions that often spark the most fruitful research ideas. Sessions on emerging neonatal therapies, maternal vaccination, and perinatal infection — including work that would later inform guidelines on group B streptococcus prophylaxis in labour and delivery — were lost to the calendar.

The cancellation also exposed how dependent regional societies had become on a small number of large in-person gatherings. Without an alternative venue, early-career researchers from smaller Australian centres in Hobart, Darwin, and Cairns lost the chance to present their data to senior reviewers. The disappointment was shared across the region, but it pushed organisers to consider formats that could survive future disruptions. That reckoning — uncomfortable as it was — became the first step towards a more resilient model of regional engagement.

Virtual Congresses and the Democratisation of Knowledge

The shift to online meetings began almost immediately. Within months of the Tokyo cancellation, regional bodies were hosting webinars, virtual poster halls, and live-streamed symposia that reached far more participants than any single convention centre could hold. For Australian clinicians juggling on-call rosters at Royal Prince Alfred or the Royal Women's in Melbourne, recorded sessions allowed them to engage with international content during night shifts or weekend breaks, something a packed Tokyo agenda had rarely permitted.

Costs also dropped sharply. Without airfares, accommodation, and registration surcharges, junior trainees from Perth Children's Hospital and the Mater in Brisbane could attend sessions that would once have been out of reach. Time zones remained a hurdle, with Perth clinicians often tuning in at inconvenient hours relative to East Asian presenters, but asynchronous access softened the blow. The FAOPS organising committee maintained an active online portal that began curating digital content reflecting the spirit of the cancelled meeting, offering a foundation for ongoing education. The result was a quieter, broader, and arguably more democratic exchange of ideas.

Telehealth and Cross-Border Clinical Consults

Australia's broader adoption of telehealth during the pandemic translated directly into perinatal practice. New Medicare items introduced in March 2020 allowed obstetricians, midwives, and neonatologists to consult remotely, a shift that proved especially valuable for patients in rural Western Australia, far north Queensland, and Tasmania. Complex fetal medicine cases that once required families to fly to Melbourne or Sydney could now be discussed via secure video links with regional general practitioners and Aboriginal health workers in places like Broome and Thursday Island.

Beyond domestic applications, the technology opened doors for international clinical partnerships. Neonatologists at Westmead Hospital and the Royal Children's in Melbourne began routine video case conferences with colleagues in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Timor-Leste, supporting the management of preterm infants where specialist expertise was scarce. These exchanges, unthinkable at scale a few years earlier, became embedded in clinical workflow. The Royal Flying Doctor Service, long a symbol of remote Australian care, also extended its telehealth footprint into postnatal support, reinforcing the view that virtual care is now a permanent feature of perinatal medicine rather than an emergency substitute.

Collaborative Research Networks and Data Sharing

The pandemic accelerated the move towards multi-centre, registry-based research — a trend already underway but supercharged by the need for rapid, large-scale answers. Australian researchers joined international cohorts examining vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the impact of maternal infection on neonatal outcomes, and the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy. Networks that had previously struggled to coordinate across borders found new urgency, and funders such as the National Health and Medical Research Council moved quickly to support collaborative applications.

Data sharing infrastructure improved in parallel. De-identified perinatal datasets from Australian tertiary hospitals were pooled with those from Singapore, Japan, and South Korea, producing analyses with the statistical power to detect rare outcomes such as neonatal stroke or unusual placental pathology. Online platforms for protocol development, electronic consent, and remote monitoring matured rapidly, and trainee exchanges migrated to virtual observerships. Perinatal medicine, long held back by regulatory fragmentation and language barriers, began to look more like a single regional enterprise, with shared standards and shared questions taking precedence over institutional silos.

Lasting Changes for the Asia-Pacific Perinatal Community

Five years on, the perinatal community in Asia and Oceania operates within a hybrid model that reflects the lessons of 2020. Large congresses have returned, but they are now complemented by year-round webinars, open-access journal clubs, and online special interest groups. Australian societies such as the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand regularly co-host sessions with counterparts in Japan, Korea, and Malaysia, drawing on digital tools that emerged during the pandemic years. The geographic reach of these collaborations has widened, with New Zealand and Pacific Island voices now more visible than they were in the pre-pandemic era.

Equity has become a more explicit priority. Regional bodies have invested in lower-bandwidth formats, translation support, and subsidised access for delegates from low- and middle-income countries, recognising that a fully virtual model can also exclude those without reliable internet. Continued attention to conditions that disproportionately affect mothers and babies in resource-limited settings — including late-onset neonatal sepsis and unmet contraception needs — has remained central to the agenda. The cancelled Tokyo meeting, painful as it was, ultimately helped catalyse a more distributed and resilient model of cooperation.

For clinicians, trainees, and researchers across Australia who want to revisit the scientific content originally planned for the Tokyo gathering, the organisers have continued to publish abstracts, speaker profiles, and clinical updates. Readers can explore the archived material to see how the original programme's themes have evolved into ongoing regional projects, and use the site as a gateway to future meetings and educational resources. The pandemic did not end international collaboration in perinatal medicine — it rebuilt it, and that work continues across the region today.