Exploring the Intersection of Health and Technology Law at University of Groningen (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Protecting health on a global scale raises tremendous challenges. Examples of those challenges include the control of infectious diseases, tackling risk factors for chronic disease, and ensuring access to proper health care. The costs of health care are on the rise, and most countries face a very serious shortage of health care personnel. Law is an important tool to foster health. It may encourage healthy and safe behaviour, positively change social and physical environments, and for example influence the structure of the public health system. It may also have a negative impact. Think about the strict abortion law that forces women to resort to unsafe abortions. We need to find out how law can be used in such a way that it fosters population health, with due respect for human rights. At the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen, we seek to answer these big questions by exploring how health-related challenges interact with various branches of law.

Speaker 2: Today, every aspect of our lives is impacted by technology. We use it to communicate, to share and store our information, and to improve how we work. While definitely convenient, aspects of these technologies challenge our set ways of regulating behaviour and activities. The central question in law has become, how and when do we regulate? Too much regulation leaves no room for innovation, but too little may leave the door open for powerful players to achieve a state of dominance in timeframes that are too short for states to be able to intervene. As much as we are driven by technological innovation, our focus is law and regulation. In every team and sector, our overarching question is, how do we ensure ways for technological innovation and fundamental rights to coexist?

Speaker 1: Global health challenges raise many complex legal questions that require the shared expertise from health law as well as technology law. Health care increasingly relies on technology to reduce costs and improve the quality of care. The use of technology in these settings means that we must pay attention to the risks that it poses.

Speaker 2: Technology can improve the quality of care, but we need to ensure that this does not come at another type of cost, for instance a disregard to patient rights. In the last year alone, several millions of patients, including in the Netherlands, have had their medical data breached, accessed by hackers and sold on the darknet.

Speaker 1: So what can law do in these situations? This is part of what we want to be able to understand. How can health law and technology law ensure a better coexistence between health technology development and patient rights?

Speaker 2: Legal scholars have traditionally operated within separate fields. This practice is no longer sustainable when it comes to current global challenges we face. Health and technology law are two central areas that encompass a range of international, regional and domestic legislation and standards.

Speaker 1: This is why we, at the Faculty of Law in Groningen, combine health and technology law in research as well as in education. Law is crucial for regulating new health technologies. There is an urgency to ensure that the lawyers of the future have knowledge and skills in both these areas. Our aim is to meet that knowledge need and to provide the necessary input and knowledge based on solid scientific research for revised or new legislation and standards.