Its now widely agreed that one of the key ways of reducing the current high level of "waste " in biomedical research is to focus it more squarely on addressing the questions that matter to patients - and the people and medical staff that care for them.

In this interview, Tessa Richards - the BMJ's patient partnership editor, talks to Katherine Cowan, independent consultant and a senior advisor the the James Lind Alliance, which has pioneered patient involvement with their research priority setting partnerships.

In this conversation they talk about how these work, the challenge of navigating between different groups with what are often very different views and agendas, and why she thinks healthy debate on divergent views is no bad thing