Dr. Ram Venkatachalam: Endings and new beginnings

Goodbye COMBACTE-CDI

Started in November 2017, the COMBACTE-CDI project has come a long way and has yielded important results. Most importantly, and despite a small delay due to the corona pandemic, it has achieved what it set out to do: develop a detailed understanding of the epidemiology and clinical impact of CDI across the whole healthcare economy in Europe. Ram has been an integral part of the project since the very beginning. “It was a steep learning experience for me as this was one of the first IMI projects I was involved in as a PMO lead. In addition, I gained insight into setting up fruitful collaborations with pharmaceutical companies. An effective public-private partnership contributed to the success of COMBACTE-CDI, in spite of some challenges being encountered (as in every other project). We managed to contribute substantially to the field of CDI research in a relatively short time.”

Ram emphasizes the importance of planning ahead in projects such as this. “Being organized, especially when you’re in the lead, is very important for the success of a project. This should already start during the post-grant award phase of the project. It is imminent to plan meticulously and anticipate possible issues in order to solve them as quickly as possible. Obviously, no one could predict the Covid-19 pandemic but problems such as people leaving the project or budget issues can be tackled by having mitigation strategies in place. Besides, it is essential to engage and work closely with the work package leads during the project, which our PMO always did and who was also open and ready to help the WP leads when needed. We haven’t missed any deadlines and delivered the report on time, something we are really proud of.” The close-out meeting of COMBACTE-CDI will be on 12 November 2021. During this meeting we will share just how the project results/outputs contribute to the overall IMI objectives as well as their value and uptake by Pharma industry and other stakeholders.

Transition into ECRAID

Exciting times lie ahead with the launch of the European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases (ECRAID) network. Within the EUPG team, Ram is responsible for grant management and Ecraid project management activities together with his grant management team. “The Ecraid network’s project management activities are a new addition to our existing grant management tasks and we happy to be a part of the core team involved in the establishment of Ecraid.” Ram hopes the transition of the different grants from UMC Utrecht into Ecraid will run smoothly.