Richard is currently the Deputy Director for Medicines Optimisation for NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group, responsible for ensuring clinically and cost-effective prescribing.
Richard Croker is currently the Deputy Director for Medicines Optimisation for NHS Devon Clinical Commissioning Group, responsible for ensuring clinically and cost-effective prescribing across 128 GP practices with an annual spend of £180m.
He also leads the programme for pathology optimisation, using many of the principles of medicines optimisation.
Richard also sits on the Devon Clinical Policy Committee, making evidence-based clinical commissioning decisions.
Richard qualified as a pharmacist in 1996 and worked in the community sector until 2002, when he joined the NHS prescribing team in North Devon.
Richard’s interests include the use of information technology to improve health outcomes and cost. He received a MSc in Health Informatics in 2008, studying how information could be used to better identify variation in prescribing costs.
He has implemented a number of systems designed to improve care within the CCG, including the Electronic Prescription Service, Scriptswitch decision support software, and a local web-based prescribing reporting system.
He is also currently works two days a week at the DataLab, University of Oxford, developing the openprescribing.net tool, and is a member of the national Medicines Optimisation Oversight Group.