Healthcare

Business law firm Mason Hayes & Curran has launched a new analysis of trends and regulatory shifts in the EU's digital health sector over the past six months. The Mid-Year Digital Health Guide focuses on critical developments that are shaping digital health in 2024 and lays the groundwork for wh

Northern Ireland is to make the biggest changes to its its public health legislative framework in nearly six decades. The Department of Health has launched a consultation asking for views on new health protection measures being implemented through a Public Health Bill to replace the current Public H

Bríd O’Flaherty BL has been appointed to chair the non-statutory inquiry into the historical licensing and use of the anti-epileptic drug sodium valproate (Epilim) in women of child-bearing potential in the State. While sodium valproate is an effective and essential treatment for some p

The EU AI Act is poised to be a catalyst for innovation in medtech, a new Mason Hayes & Curran survey suggests. The business law firm polled close to 200 professionals from the medtech sector at its recent webinar titled "What the AI Act Means for Medical Devices". The findings come as the new r

Marguerite Kehoe BL reviews recent case law highlighting the systemic challenges face by the CFA in securing an adequate number of special care beds for minors requiring assistance. The inability of the Child and Family Agency (CFA) to provide sufficient special care beds has been the subject of sev

Free hospital car parking in Northern Ireland has to be delayed in part due to legal challenges affecting plans to use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology, health minister Robin Swann has said. The Hospital Parking Charges Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, which bans the imposition of pa

Mark Connaughton SC has been appointed as the independent chair of the new Paediatric Spinal Taskforce. The government has established the multi-stakeholder taskforce in a bid to cut waiting times for children who need spinal surgery.

The family of a woman who died from breast cancer after a delayed diagnosis have received a substantial settlement and a public apology from the HSE. Lynn Rocke passed away of metastatic breast carcinoma on 16 March 2020, having been diagnosed in March 2018.

Carson McDowell associate Genevieve Brindley highlights a UK judgment on psychiatric illness negligently caused to 'secondary victims' and considers the possible implications in Ireland. In a recent decision relating to three cases — Paul v Wolverhamptom NHS Trust, Polmear and another v R

Doctors and patients are suffering mental harm as a result of Ireland's slow and expensive litigation process, the Medical Protection Society (MPS) has said. A new MPS report states that a clinical negligence claim in Ireland takes an average of 1,462 days to resolve, 14 per cent longer than in Sout

The Court of Appeal has upheld the dismissal of a clinical negligence claim in circumstances where no expert report had been obtained by the plaintiff’s solicitors almost eight years after the proceedings had issued. Delivering judgment for the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Seamus Noonan denounc

Karen Kearney, partner at Cantillons Solicitors, comments on the coming investigation into Aoife Johnston's death at University Hospital Limerick. I listened with interest to an interview on Morning Ireland on 5 January 2024 with Stephen Donnelly, our minister for health. He was asked by Rachel Engl

Northern Ireland barrister James Stitt examines a Scottish case with significance for clinical negligence practitioners. Once more, a Scottish case has provided an opportunity for a substantial development of the law in the field of clinical negligence.

Medical and professional negligence specialist firm Liston Flavin LLP has promoted Aoife O'Kane to partner. Ms O'Kane has six years' experience practising as a solicitor, primarily in plaintiff medical negligence litigation.

A national open disclosure framework for the health and social sector has been launched, applying beyond the HSE to all private health and social care providers as well as health regulators and educational bodies. The new framework was launched by health minister Stephen Donnelly at the National Pat