Dr Raph Hamers from our EOCRU unit in Jakarta, Indonesia, tells us how he developed collaborative clinical trials. 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.