1. Current Status, Position

Clare Howard is an independant pharmacist with over 25 years working with and for the NHS. Clare is currently the Clinical lead for the National Polypharmacy programme run by the Academic Health Science Network in England.

2. Education

She studied Pharmacy at the University of Aston in Birmingham and qualified in 2004. Clare has held management roles in a range of NHS primary and community care settings. In her role as Strategic Health Authority Pharmaceutical Adviser, she led successful regional QIPP and medication safety programmes both of which gained national recognition, including a Gold NHS Innovation Challenge Prize in 2012, and led to Clare taking on the role of National Lead for the Medicines use and Procurement QIPP Programme for the Department of Health.As the first Deputy Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for NHS England, Clare led the Medicines Optimisation programme and delivered the first national medicines optimisation dashboard as well as chairing a number of national committees.

3. Research Area

Her current portfolio includes Clinical Lead for Medicines Optimisation at Wessex Academic Health Science Network where she led the publication of the first national set of polypharmacy prescribing comparators in England winner of the HSJ Patient safety award in 2019. She has led three national AHSN programmes - The first spread the medication safety programme PINCER. This resulted in over 13,000 fewer patients at risk from harm from clinicially significant medication errors. The second was the Transfer of Care Around Medicines ( TCAM)  programme which saw over 60 trusts make over 100,000 referrals to community pharmacies and was instrumental in the development of the national Discharge Medicines Service. Clare is currently the Clinical Lead for the AHSN Network Polypharmacy Programme.

4. Conflict of interest

None