Barker's business career has included work in both Europe and the US. He worked for
McKinsey between 1980 and 1993, where he headed the European Healthcare practice and advised UK, Swiss and US 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
IBM's healthcare business, between 1993 and 1996 he launched
Health village, one of the earliest Internet healthcare applications. At
Chiron, a multinational bio-technology firm that was acquired by
Novartis in 1996, he headed the diagnostics business, which brought the latest
immunodiagnostics to market. He subsequently served as a chairman and chief executive of Molecular Staging, whose
genome amplification technology enables
gene sequencing on rare
DNA samples. On returning to the UK, he headed the
Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) for six years between 2004 and 2011 and initiated policy programs in stratified medicine, while also launching frameworks for translational partnerships between academia and industry. He also formed and chaired Stem Cells for Safer Medicines, a public/private partnership formed to develop new approaches to testing potential new medicines for toxicity. In 2012 with his colleagues at Oxford and UCL, he founded 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. As Founding Director of CASMI he held an associate professorship in Oxford University's Medical Division from 2012 to 2017. 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 (NHS), and to facilitate innovations emerging from academic and industrial research into NHS application. Effective as of December 18, 2020, he resigned from the Board of Directors of 180 Life Sciences Corp, because of other commitments that would not allow him to spend sufficient time on Company matters. He chairs the charity International Health Partners that brings donated medicines to developing countries, crisis situations and refugee camps. He has also founded and directed New Medicine Partners, an advisory company that creates strategies for precision medicine and precision health to advance a healthy lifespan. He is also the Founding Director of
Metadvice, a global healthcare company developing an AI-driven platform for clinical decision making. == Board memberships ==