Before founding TropMed Pharma Consulting, Ian Boulton spent his entire professional career working in the pharmaceutical industry. In over 30 years working with Glaxo, SmithKline & French, SmithKline Beecham, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), he has held roles in a wide variety of functions – R&D, Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Strategic Planning, & General Management.

Pharmaceutical Industry

Ian spent 20 years based in the Asia-Pacific Region – principally in Japan, Thailand, & a regional role based in Singapore.

After the GlaxoSmithKline merger in 2001 until his retirement in 2008, Ian was Director, Global Commercial Strategy – Diseases of the Developing World (DDW) within the R&D organisation of GSK. He led the team that developed and owned GSK’s strategy for the discovery, development, and deployment of drugs to treat the major diseases that disproportionately affect the poorest countries.

His role also involved developing and maintaining target profiles for GSK’s DDW portfolio and then ensuring that projects remained focused right up till registration and launch on delivering products that met the specific needs of patients in the developing world. He was also responsible for developing the launch strategies for these products, which were mostly to be marketed only in developing countries (with their unique challenges). Most of these projects were carried out as product development partnerships (PDPs). He has extensive experience of working in collaborative PDPs with academic institutions (e.g. Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), Government organisations (e.g. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, National Institutes of Health), funding organisations (e.g. Medicines for Malaria Venture, the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust), and intergovernmental organisations (e.g. World Health Organization).

Roll Back Malaria, Global Fund and Malaria Consortium

Ian is recognised as a leading figure in the global effort to control, eliminate, and ultimately eradicate malaria. Between 2004 and 2008 he was a Board Member of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) – the global collaboration between governments, NGOs, civil society, and the private sector to tackle malaria worldwide. He was a member of the Partnership’s Executive Committee, the Performance & Evaluation Sub-committee, & an advisor to the Partnership’s Task Force on the Affordable Medicines Facility – malaria (AMFm). In 2009-10, he was the Consultant to the Board’s Performance and Accountability Task Force. In 2012-13 he was the consultant supporting the Chair of the RBM AMFm Task Force, as well as a member of the Task Force in his own right. He has also been a member of the Partnership’s Transition Support Team, which implemented the changes to the Partnership agreed by its Board in December 2015.

Between 2009 and 2011 Ian represented the Private Sector on the Global Fund in para 2 to Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s ad hoc Market Dynamics and Commodities Committee. He has also acted as an advisor to the Fund on product QA policy and on AMFm. Between 2012 and 2014 he was a member of the Fund’s Market Dynamics Advisory Group (MDAG) and the MDAG Working Group on AMFm.

Ian is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Malaria Consortium. He served on the Board between 2009 and 2015 and was reappointed in 2020. The Consortium is one of the world’s leading not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the control of malaria. He served on the Board’s Governance and Compensation Committees. He is currently a non-Trustee member of the Finance, Audit, & Risk Committee.

Panels and Presentations

Ian’s expertise is often called upon to participate in panels and to give presentations on his areas of expertise. Events and organizations he has spoken at include:-

• Academy of Medical Sciences
• All Party Parliamentary Group on Malaria & Neglected Tropical Diseases
• Artemisinin Enterprise Conference
• Asia-Pacific Technology Network
• Cambridge Science Week
• “Connecting the Chain” Stakeholder Forum (organised by the Netherlands Foreign Ministry).
• Euro-Africa Health Investment Conference
• Friends of ALMA Manufacturers’ Forum
• International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases
• Pan-African National Malaria Control Programs Meeting
• UNITAID Malaria Market Forum
• WHO-MMV Artemisinin Forums