Background
Richard Barker was born on 18 October 1948 in South London.
Richard Barker was born on 18 October 1948 in South London.
He attended Alleyn"s School in Dulwich, London, until the age of 18. Richard Barker was educated at Exeter College Oxford, where he received a Bachelor"s degree in Chemistry. Following completion of his degree, he researched biological applications of magnetic resonance techniques in pursuit of an Oxford Doctor of Philosophy and in post-doctoral studies in Munich, Germany and Leeds, England.
He is known as the Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovation (CASMI). Barker"s business career has included work in both Europe and the United States. He worked for McKinsey between 1980 and 1993, where he headed the European Healthcare practice and advised United Kingdom, Swiss and United States pharmaceutical companies. He also helped establish "London First", a public/private initiative that aims to enhance London’s status as a global city.
As General Manager of International Business Machines Corporation"s healthcare business, between 1993 and 1996 he launched Healthvillage, one of the earliest Internet healthcare applications.
At Chiron, a multinational biotechnology firm that was acquired by Novartis in 1996, he headed the diagnostics business, which brought the latest immunodiagnostics to market. He subsequently served as chairman and chief executive of Molecular Staging, whose genome amplification technology enables gene sequencing on rare deoxyribonucleic acid samples.
On returning to the United Kingdom, he headed the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) for six years between 2004 and 2011 and initiated policy programmes in stratified medicine, while also launching frameworks for translational partnerships between academia and industry. He formed and chairs Stem Cells of Safer Medicines, a public/private partnership formed to develop new approaches to testing potential new medicines for toxicity.
With colleagues in Oxford and University College London, he has formed CASMI to develop, test and promote new models of medical innovation, including adaptive licensing, cell therapy regulation and a combination of therapeutic and diagnostic products to focus treatments on the patients most likely to benefit.
He chairs the South London Academic Health Science Network, which aims to improve the quality and consistency of care in that part of the National Health Service (National Health Service), and to facilitate innovations emerging from academic and industrial research into National Health Service application. Celgene Corporation.
