Beyond the Buffet: Moving Life Sciences from “Sponsor” to “Solutions Partner” in Respiratory Care

There's a familiar pattern at respiratory care events across the UK. Life Sciences companies arrive with branded tote bags, sponsor the lunch, and leave business cards by the coffee station. The NHS attendees appreciate the free sandwiches, exchange pleasantries, and return to their desks where the real work happens: often without meaningful input from the companies who funded the day.

This transactional model isn't working for anyone anymore. NHS teams need genuine support to transform pathways under intense budget pressure. Life Sciences organisations want to contribute value beyond the buffet table. And patients: whose outcomes depend on both groups collaborating effectively: deserve better than polite networking over vol-au-vents.

The shift from "sponsor" to "solutions partner" isn't about semantics. It's about fundamentally rethinking how industry and the NHS work together to improve respiratory care.

What "Solutions Partner" Actually Means

In practice, a solutions partner doesn't just fund an event or provide educational materials. They sit alongside NHS teams to understand the actual problems being faced on the ground: then bring expertise, resources, and capacity to help solve them.

This might look like:

• Co-designing a COPD case-finding pathway with a CCG respiratory lead
• Providing data analysis support to identify patients at rising risk
• Funding health coaching roles that help embed new inhaler technique training
• Contributing to multi-stakeholder working groups focused on health inequalities in asthma care

What it doesn't look like is arriving with a pre-packaged solution, a product to promote, or an agenda that serves commercial timelines over patient need.

The Compliance Challenge (and How to Navigate It)

The biggest barrier to meaningful partnership is often the fear of getting compliance wrong. NHS teams worry about conflicts of interest. Life Sciences organisations worry about breaching ABPI code. Everyone worries about headlines.

These concerns are valid, but they're also manageable when partnerships are structured properly from the start.

Do: Establish Clear Governance Early

Set up terms of reference that define roles, decision-making authority, and how conflicts will be managed. Make sure patient representatives and clinical leads have equal voice. Document everything.

Don't: Let Legal Teams Work in Isolation

Compliance isn't just a legal checkbox: it requires input from communications, clinical, and patient engagement teams to ensure partnerships are both compliant and credible.

Do: Focus on System-Level Problems

Partnerships built around improving pathways, reducing variation, or addressing inequalities are far easier to justify than those promoting specific products or services.

Don't: Confuse Partnership with Procurement

If you're selling something, call it what it is. True solutions partnerships exist to solve shared problems, not to fast-track sales conversations.

The Patient Voice Isn't Optional

One of the fastest ways to spot a genuine solutions partnership is to ask: where are the patients?

If people with lived experience of asthma, COPD, or other respiratory conditions aren't involved in shaping the work from the beginning, you're not building a solution: you're building an assumption.

What this looks like on the ground:

• Patient representatives co-designing survey questions about access to spirometry
• People with COPD reviewing draft care pathways to identify practical barriers
• Asthma patients contributing to training materials for primary care teams

This isn't about tokenism or tick-box engagement. Patients understand what works and what doesn't in ways that data never fully captures. Their insight shapes better, more implementable solutions.

Aligning with NHS Priorities (Not Your Product Roadmap)

Life Sciences organisations often arrive with enthusiasm and expertise: but also with timelines driven by commercial imperatives that don't match NHS cycles.

A solutions partner understands that NHS teams are working to Integrated Care Board priorities, national frameworks like the NHS Long Term Plan, and local population health targets. These aren't optional considerations: they're the context in which all partnership work must sit.

In respiratory care, this means understanding:

• The focus on early diagnosis and quality-assured spirometry
• Rising-risk COPD identification and proactive care
• Health inequalities, particularly in BAME communities and areas of deprivation
• The shift toward integrated, community-based care models

If your partnership proposal doesn't directly support one of these priorities, it's unlikely to gain traction: no matter how innovative or well-funded it is.

Do: Start with Listening

Spend time understanding what keeps your NHS colleagues awake at night. What are the barriers they face? What would genuinely make their jobs easier and improve patient outcomes?

Don't: Pitch Before You Understand

Arriving with a "solution" before you've understood the problem is the fastest way to undermine trust.

The Geography Matters

The UK isn't a single healthcare system: it's four nations with different structures, priorities, and decision-making processes. Even within England, Integrated Care Systems operate with significant autonomy.

Solutions partners need to recognise this complexity. A pathway that works brilliantly in Birmingham might need substantial adaptation for Bradford. Budgets, workforce, demographic profiles, and local politics all shape what's possible.

This is where organisations like The Respiratory Network play a role: connecting Life Sciences with NHS leads across regions, facilitating peer learning, and helping translate good practice into local contexts.

Co-Design, Not Consultation

There's a difference between consulting stakeholders on a pre-formed idea and genuinely co-designing from a blank page.

Co-design means:

• Bringing NHS clinicians, patients, and industry representatives together at the start of a project, not the end
• Giving all voices equal weight in shaping objectives and approach
• Being willing to abandon your original idea if the group identifies a better direction
• Sharing ownership of outcomes: and credit for success

It's slower, messier, and harder to manage than a traditional consultancy approach. It's also far more likely to produce something that actually gets implemented and sustained.

The Long Game

One of the biggest mindset shifts required is moving from short-term sponsorship cycles to long-term partnership thinking.

Real system change in respiratory care takes years, not months. A solutions partner commits to being present for the hard parts: the implementation challenges, the mid-project setbacks, the need to iterate and adapt.

This requires patience, flexibility, and a willingness to measure success in outcomes that matter to patients and the NHS, not just internal KPIs.

Do: Measure What Matters

Track improvements in patient outcomes, reductions in health inequalities, or increases in early diagnosis rates. These are the metrics that matter.

Don't: Focus Only on Reach

The number of people who attended an event or downloaded a resource tells you almost nothing about impact on respiratory care.

Moving Forward

The opportunity for meaningful partnership between Life Sciences and the NHS in respiratory care has never been greater. Budget constraints, workforce pressures, and rising demand mean the NHS needs support. Life Sciences organisations have expertise, capacity, and resources to contribute.

But this only works if both sides are willing to move beyond transactional relationships and invest in genuine collaboration: the kind that's sometimes uncomfortable, always complex, and ultimately transformative.

It starts with asking better questions. Not "how can we sponsor this?" but "what problem are we trying to solve together?" Not "what can we sell?" but "what can we build?"

The buffet will still be there. But the conversation that happens around it needs to change.

Ready to be part of the shift? Join The Respiratory Network to connect with NHS leads, Life Sciences partners, and patient advocates working to transform respiratory care across the UK. Register here or join us at our next Round Table event to explore how genuine partnership can drive better outcomes for everyone who needs to breathe easier.