Mr Colm McGrath on "Liability for Failure to Disclose and the Challenge of Precision Medicine"

Mr Colm McGrath

"Liability for Failure to Disclose and the Challenge of Precision Medicine"

Precision Medicine: Legal and Ethical Challenges

University of Hong Kong

7 April 2016

Abstract:

This paper examines the role of personalised medicine in medical intervention and treatment. It does so by focusing on the law surrounding risk disclosure and securing the patient’s consent to treatment in the UK. This is an area of law which has undergone significant change in the last year following the decision of the UK Supreme Court in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board. That decision, which has introduced uncertainty as to when a clinician ought to offer a particular treatment as an alternative to other suggested treatments, has the potential to greatly influence the availability of some precision treatments in practice in the UK.