The Primary Care Respiratory Academy is an exciting new long-term educational initiative developed through a partnership between Cogora and the Primary Care Respiratory Society UK, and with funding provided by the Pfizer/Novartis alliance and now including Napp Pharmaceuticals.

The project kicked off back in 2015 and since then we have welcomed a highly-engaged audience of almost 1,300 GPs and nurses across 20 live events across the UK and have launched a thriving digital hub with over 900 registered users.

The biggest challenge has not been trying to keep an audience of over 2,000 healthcare professionals engaged, it has been working with a charity itself.

There is an enormous array of benefits in partnering with a charity, most importantly in cementing the credibility and integrity of the programme. We are hugely lucky to be working with PCRS-UK and to be guided by very knowledgeable and esteemed respiratory experts. However, in doing so, it can be challenging to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.

Working with an incredibly passionate, but opinionated, PCRS-UK Editorial board, in addition to a large speaker faculty, can be a juggling act both from a logistical and content development perspective; it has certainly presented its fair share of challenging situations over the course of the project! Ultimately though the breadth of knowledge and experience brought together by PCRS-UK has made the outcomes all the better for all involved and we have come a long way since the project began.

Cogora: The Agency and our colleagues at PCRS-UK are very much looking forward to the 2017 programme and delighted that we are launching an additional forum for collaboration and networking across the commissioning community – the Respiratory Commissioning Platform. Development of both programmes is now fully under way; both promise to be hugely interactive and dynamic, with the ultimate aim of improving respiratory care through learning and sharing of best practice.