Founded in 1983 in Paris by Professor R. Modigliani, the Groupe d’ETude des Affections Inflammatoires Digestives (GETAID) was established to develop collaborative clinical research on inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This was innovative 40 years ago and remains challenging today. From the beginning, this multicenter group has aimed to address clinical questions arising from patients, physicians, and the IBD community by conducting clinical research on treatments through randomized controlled trials, prospective cohorts, index creation, and observational studies. GETAID has advanced IBD knowledge by publishing over 140 original articles in peer-reviewed journals. This review explores the history of the GETAID, how it functions, and its contribution to IBD knowledge over the past four decades. It illustrates the disruptive and innovative academic research conducted by an independent group of researchers and its potential future impact through examples.
Laharie et al. (2026) studied this question.