Spotlight On…Nicola Glover-Thomas

Please can you tell us a little about your role?

I am a Professor of Medical Law at the School of Law, currently completing a project with the Ministry of Justice on Mental Health Tribunals (funded by the Humanities Strategic Investment Fund) and editing a book with Professor Thierry Vansweevelt (Antwerp) called ‘Informed Consent and Health: A Global Analysis.

You’re currently planning a major conference on healthcare disparities and new healthcare technologies. What can you tell us about its themes and its significance within the field?

The theme of this conference is ‘Healthcare disparities, disruptive healthcare technologies and the patient in Europe.’ Health inequalities and how to effectively respond to them is a challenging subject. Disparities in healthcare refer to often negative differences in healthcare provision between different population groups, including race/ethnicity, age, socio-economic group, location, gender, disability status and sexual orientation. A complex and interrelated set of individual, provider, health system, societal and environmental factors contribute to these disparities in health and healthcare. Justice demands that these disparities matter and how legal systems and governance frameworks across the globe operate and respond is important to understand. Jurisdictional differences in approach complicate how health inequalities should and are responded to.

In the health field, disruptive technologies offer the potential to reset the way in which things have been done and injecting new opportunities for healthcare development thus reducing these health disparities. These technologies offer the potential to provide cheaper, simpler, more convenient and more responsive products or services.

The conference encourages fundamental and challenging questions to be asked: Are disparities in health here to stay? To what extent is technological innovation the answer to health inequalities? What role does and should the law play here? And what legal and ethical benefits and challenges might emerge in the future? Specific sub-themes are: i) Patient rights and health inequalities; (ii) BREXIT and its consequences on health; (iii) Disruptive technologies and health disparities; iv) Rationing and healthcare systems; (v) Regulating innovation (or disruptive technologies) - a global perspective; and, (vi) Patient safety and disruptive innovations.

What emerging healthcare technologies interest you most and why?

Personalised medicine presents a host of potential opportunities for more cost-effective and life changing healthcare, while reproductive technologies and technologies designed to replace body parts offers hope for many. However, my interest lies in the question of just because technology and greater knowledge exists, whether we should in fact continue to expect medicine to offer this hoped for panacea to expanding healthcare needs. Recent case law, such as Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and Isaiah Haastrup, has drawn attention to the tension of rising patient expectations and what medicine can actually do particularly when any intervention is deemed medically futile.

If you could take anybody out for dinner, who would it be and what would you talk about?

Definitely Sir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy (3 November 1919 – 18 October 2009). As a child Ludovic Kennedy sparked my interest in law, specifically medico-legal issues. As a journalist and campaigner, he was known particularly for his investigative journalism and his work on miscarriages of justice and he played a prominent role in the abolition of the death penalty in the UK. He was also a campaigner and advocate for the legalisation of assisted suicide and was a co-founder and former chair of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (now Dignity in Dying). As a GCSE student I came across his book, Euthanasia: The Case for the Good Death which sparked an interest in human rights and the individual’s right to choose.

*Proceedings from the healthcare disparities conference will be published in special issues of the Medical Law Review (Spring 2020) and the Journal of Medical Law and Ethics (Summer 2020).