Medical innovation: proposals to make clinical negligence law clearer
Asks for views on whether clarifying the law will encourage doctors to develop innovative treatments in a responsible way.
We want to know whether the Medical Innovation Bill should be made law. The main aim is to help us understand: would the bill help encourage responsible medical innovation, and help prevent irresponsible innovation?
We welcome comments from everyone with an interest – particularly doctors, patients and legal professionals.
If the bill becomes law, doctors will be able to innovate where there is no body of opinion to support the innovation or where it’s not clear whether this exists.
The proposed safeguards suggest doctors should have sound reasons for their innovation and the bill would introduce a statutory best practice checklist as a safeguard against irresponsible innovation.