Many countries have responded (or have considered responding) to the COVID pandemic by modifying their intellectual property laws to ensure the availability of vaccines, medicines, diagnostics, and related information. Some have asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) for a waiver to excuse any...

With an expanding market for what is now known as "complimentary and alternative" medicine (CAM), states are increasingly facing the issue of who can and who should be allowed to practice medicine. Of necessity, this question also concerns whom patients may see to treat their ailments. This...

Experience teaches that the Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH) will need a financing facility if it is to garner widespread acceptance among low-income countries. The promise of financing is a well-established carrot to encourage countries to assume new convention-imposed obligations...

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential...

The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) signature accomplishment was the creation of a statutory right to health care for the uninsured. The ambition and the degree of societal and political debate leading up to the Act’s passage suggests it is a “superstatute,” a rare breed of statute that...

Penicillin and other antibiotics were the original wonder drugs and laid the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Human health significantly improved with the introduction of antibiotics. By 1967, the US Surgeon General declared victory over infectious diseases in the US. But pride...

This article provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the adoption and regulation of telehealth and telemedicine services in the United Kingdom, and specifically with reference to its National Health Service (“NHS”). The discussion and analysis reveal waxing and waning ambitions on...

The right to health has been repeatedly recognized as one of the core human rights, essential for human functioning, human dignity, economic well-being, and development. But the right to health continues to elude hundreds of millions and with Covid-19, perhaps billions of people. Poverty remains...

Direct primary care is a promising, market-based alternative to the fee-for-service payment structure that shapes doctor–patient relationships in America. Instead of billing patients and insurers service by service, direct primary care doctors charge their patients a periodic, prenegotiated...

Tort reform has been a hot topic among those interested in assessing whether and how well the tort system aids injured plaintiffs in achieving civil justice. The debate has been especially heated when it comes to medical malpractice liability. Until recently, rhetoric about the liability system...