Iain Barton

As a Senior Fellow at MSH, Dr. Iain Barton supports MSH’s innovation and thought leadership in health strategy, policy, advocacy, and execution. He is a medical doctor with 10 years of clinical practice and over 25 years of professional experience in health care supply chain management and health care systems advisory.

As the co-founder and CEO of Pharmaceutical Healthcare Distributors and later as CEO of RTT Logistics — the largest privately owned logistics company in Africa, with 6,500 staff across 6 countries — he helped develop and establish Regional Distribution Centers to support the global scale-up of the US Government’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and the Supply Chain Control Tower that supported the Global Fund’s Pooled Procurement Mechanism. His innovations included Unjani Clinics, Warehouse-in-a-Box, and Clinic-in-a-Box.

During his time as Imperial Logistics’ Executive Vice President – Healthcare, he led the coordination of that company’s health care strategy, innovation, systems solution design, and new market expansion, including developing a mega-distributor model enhancing medicine access across African markets. He also served as CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) — an 1,800-person global health advisory with a presence in over 40 countries.

Being a dedicated South African, he has served on the Advisory Boards of Merck for Mothers, People that Deliver, the ARC (Africa Resource Centre), Insights by Experts, and the University of Cape Town’s Department of Global Surgery. In 2021, he founded Health 4 Development — the principal advisory for impact investments and market access strategies in the private health care sector of Africa, addressing real and urgent needs within the health system. He holds MB and ChB degrees from the University of Cape Town.

Acknowledged by his peers as a global health pioneer, Dr. Barton continues innovating, incubating, and scaling best practice functions.