The mission and vision of the AG&M directors Dr. Stan van de Graaf and Prof. Dr. Gerd Bouma 4
“It was tentative at first, trial and error, those guys across the Amstel were our competitors, now we had to collaborate, to trust them, we were told to just go for it.” Such were the birth pangs of the Amsterdam Gastroenterology & Metabolism (AG&M) research institute according to co-director Professor Gerd Bouma. Now, just two years on, Bouma sees it beginning to work “exquisitely well” with clinicians and scientists beginning to talk, work, and think together. “It was tentative at first, trial and error, those guys across the Amstel were our competitors, now we had to collaborate, to trust them, we were told to just go for it.” With limited funding or, then, any obvious incentives, the first step was simply: “to promote a spirit of common purpose” of identity. Meetings were deliberately not held at either the AMC or VUmc sites, but at a third location. Then came the crucial first <strong>annual</strong> AG&M meeting or “retreat” the “mainstay of this Institute” where all scientists and PhD students present their work. Van de Graaf: “We needed to hear what everyone was doing, what was their line of research. We thought we already knew, but in fact we didn’t know at all.” “We needed to hear what everyone was doing, what was their line of research. We thought we already knew, but in fact we didn’t know at all.” The mission and vision of the AG&M directors His co-director Dr. Stan van de Graaf - from across the river - shares his confidence. His sees the AG&M research institute as “unique” in the Netherlands, simply for its size, with well over 400 PhD students, serving an Amsterdam catchment population of approximately 1 million, and with its dedicated focus on gastroenterology, metabolism and endocrinology in one institute. Today, he sees a sense of unity, of being part of something bigger, of the promise of “special opportunities” for science, healthcare and patients. There had been talk of Amsterdam’s University Medical Center (AMC) and Free University medical centre (VUmc) merging since 2011. At the beginning of 2017, it suddenly became real as the two major hospitals’, culture, politics and ways of organizing science had to begin to come together. Among many other things, the challenge was to take the VUmc’s popular research institutes and to merge this concept with the AMC’s principal investigator approach. Eight research institutes finally emerged of which AG&M was one, building on the former AMC’s research focus on Metabolic/ Endocrine disorders and Gastrointestinal diseases. This created knowledge, trust, and the belief that “we can work together”. The first retreat “was a bit intense”, with a huge number of pitches to introduce the vast amount of different research topics, but now, the third, “was really fabulous” says Van de Graaf. In addition to the <strong>annual</strong> AG&M retreat, monthly seminars and symposia were organized while, in this spirit of collaboration, scientists were encouraged to attend clinical settings such as multidisciplinary team meetings to discuss real patients. Collaboration was also promoted through funding, grants for talented teams of researchers who could demonstrate a degree of synergy in their work. For Professor Bouma, what began was no less than a change of attitude, of mindset, and from the bottom up. “Whatever your expertise, the discipline your working in, you are part of something bigger and we can benefit from each other.” And more often than not 5
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