Developing collaborative clinical trials in Indonesia

Indonesia is a very populous country with a huge burden of infectious diseases such as TB, malaria, HIV and CNS infections. Running clinical trials requires high levels of expertise, currently developed and strengthened by institutions such as IOCRL (Universities of Indonesia and Oxford Clinical Research laboratory). Better collaborations will also help great ideas make a bigger impact.

View podcast transcript

Raph Hamers, MD PhD, is an Associate Professor in Infectious Diseases at Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, based in Indonesia where he leads the Clinical Infectious Disease Research Programme at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit Indonesia (OUCRU-ID). He is also an honorary consultant internist and infectious disease physician at the Amsterdam University Medical Centres and an honorary research fellow at the Faculty of Medicine University of Indonesia (FKUI). Following his PhD in Medicine at the University of Amsterdam, he was the recipient of a Veni postdoc fellowship through the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Talent Programme.

Dr. Hamers' work has ranged from biomedicine to global health, with a focus on improving health outcomes of complex infectious diseases in low and middle income countries. He has extensive experience as a lead investigator of clinical trials and connected epidemiological, social and laboratory science studies in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Dr. Hamers's research is focused on the diagnosis and clinical management, drug resistance and immune function in HIV-1 infection, the clinical management of tuberculosis, antimicrobial stewardship, and emerging infectious diseases. This includes COVID-19 diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics, and its collateral impacts on the wider health system in Indonesia. He is also a consultant for the World Health Organization Antimicrobial Resistance Division. He has received funding from the Dutch Research Council, the Dutch AidsFonds, the UK Medical Research Council-UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), UK Wellcome Trust, US Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Oxford University, and other agencies.

In 2018, Dr. Hamers established the Universities of Indonesia-Oxford Clinical Research Laboratory (IOCRL) embedded in the Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta, which houses a research laboratory, OUCRU-ID's Clinical Infectious Disease Research Programme, Clinical Research Support Unit, and Public and Community Engagement with Science Unit. An important goal of this facility is to drive the development of local research capacities, working closely with OUCRU-ID's principal partners in Indonesia and the Oxford Tropical Network.