How Global Vaccine Data Network ran 68 concurrent safety studies in ClickUp

Ninety-nine million people. That's the population covered by the COVID vaccine safety studies the Global Vaccine Data Network (GVDN)ran between 2021 and 2025 — spanning 24 countries and 68 simultaneous studies, coordinated by an operations team you could count on two hands.

This is the story of how GVDN — a global research network hosted at Auckland UniServices Ltd in New Zealand (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Auckland) and handed a global mandate by the US CDC — rebuilt its operating layer in ClickUp, and what becomes possible when the scaffolding finally matches the ambition of the science.

GVDN was established in early 2019 with a mission to evaluate vaccine safety and effectiveness once vaccines reach communities. For a small network of researchers and collaborating institutions, spreadsheets were enough. Then COVID arrived, and so did the call.

The US CDC identified GVDN as the only network of its kind capable of launching a global project to evaluate vaccine safety and funded the Global COVID Vaccine Safety (GCoVS) project. The team went from running a handful of small projects to a global flagship project, including 68 simultaneous studies across 24 countries with 25 institutions implementing harmonized research protocols. The science was rigorous. But the operational scaffolding underneath it was being asked to carry weight it had never been designed for, taking a toll on the team holding the picture together.

A new project manager joined GVDN three years ago to scope a project management platform that could match the network's complexity. "We undertook a careful evaluation before choosing a platform to match the task of running 68 simultaneous studies across 20+ countries," she recalls. "ClickUp's flexibility and pricing made it the call, and now the incredible science has robust operational scaffolding to match it."

The build mirrored how GVDN's research works. Every task lives at the intersection of three dimensions: project, study, and site. GVDN’s Senior Project Manager mapped that matrix into ClickUp using Relationships, with ten to twelve links per list connecting people, studies, papers, working groups, and site roles. Open any study, and you see who's involved, what's connected, and where things stand. Open any person's profile, and you can trace every project and study they touch.

She puts it simply: "GVDN's operations live at the intersection of project, study, and site, with each project demanding variation in structure. We mapped that matrix into ClickUp using Relationships and base templates that we then customized per project, keeping consistency where it matters and flexibility where the work needs it."

On top of that architecture, hundreds of automations now move deliverables between sites, project managers, and data teams without an email in sight.

The clearest shift shows up in the rhythm of the day-to-day. 

A GVDN operations team member offers a small, telling example: "Very simple questions from leadership, like 'how many low-income country sites are participating in each study' or 'what is the delivery status of tasks for sites across a particular study,' used to take hours to confirm from multiple scattered sources. Now, ClickUp dashboards answer them in seconds.”

Risk shows up earlier than it used to. In long-horizon, grant-funded research, slippage compounds: a delayed milestone in month three could become a missed deliverable in month nine. Status tracking now surfaces that drift while it's still recoverable.

The reclaimed effort adds up. "We used to spend hours figuring out the status of study deliverables to stitch reports together each week," she says. "With ClickUp's dashboards and automations, we've reclaimed at least a full FTE of operational effort, and our small ops team can report instantly on demand without having to pull the scientists and statisticians away from their work to answer questions about task delivery.”

It's a Tuesday morning in Auckland. A partner site in another time zone wrapped a call an hour ago; the minutes are already in the workspace, action items routed to the right people, and deliverables tied to the studies they belong to. A long-running study flags amber for a key dashboard deliverable — early enough that the team can do something about it.

Workshops with the team's ClickUp consultant are next, refining the automation library as the portfolio grows, updating templates to reflect changing priorities, and upskilling team members in evolving platform use cases. ClickUp Brain is on the horizon, with the team eyeing it for document analysis and AI-powered triage.

The science was always rigorous. It still is. But now the morning no longer starts with status-chasing—and the operations team behind one of the world's largest vaccine safety research efforts is completely on top of the backend work needed for the science to flourish.