Scientific Program – WAML Congress 2026, Antwerp, Belgium

Expanding Boundaries of Health Law: Access, Innovation and Interdisciplinarity

Theme 1 – Equitable Access to Healthcare

• Financial and geographical barriers (e.g., rural access, cost of care, transport gaps, telehealth inequality)
• Access in low- and middle-income countries (e.g., legal strategies for scaling services, patent law vs. medicine access)
• Balancing individual and collective rights (e.g., patient autonomy vs. vaccination mandates, compulsory treatment for mental illness or addiction)
• Culturally appropriate care (e.g., non-Western healing, migrant health, religious practices, language barriers, gender norms and care access)

Theme 2 – Technology & Legal Innovation

• Innovative treatments & technologies (e.g., nanomedicine, robotic surgery, smart pill and digital pill)
• Complex care outside the hospital (e.g., home monitoring)
• Artificial Intelligence in healthcare (e.g., diagnostics, liability in AI error)
• Health data sharing (e.g., EHDSR, GDPR compliance, health data portability)
• Genetics (e.g., gene editing, legal status of DNA data)
• Transgender & intersex care (e.g., legal recognition, access to care, minors)

Theme 3 – Impact of Health Law on other disciplines of law and vice versa

• Legal medicine (e.g., forensic evidence, expert witness, autopsy, status of body parts, protection of the corpse, donation of the body to science)
• Sports law (e.g., doping regulation, concussion protocols)
• Insurance law (e.g., legal status of the insurance company doctor, medical secrecy)
• Tort law (e.g., malpractice, hospital liability, loss of a chance, defensive medicine)
• Criminal law (e.g., euthanasia prosecutions, assisted suicide, illegal practice, healthcare fraud)
• Pharmaceutical law (e.g., clinical trials, off label, patent disputes, drug approval processes, market access)
• Travel law (e.g., cross-border care, medical tourism regulation)
• Migration law (e.g., healthcare rights of undocumented migrants)
• Military law (e.g., battlefield triage, combatant health rights, medical experimentation on military personnel)
• Competition law (e.g., pharma monopolies, market distortion in healthcare)
• Disciplinary law (e.g., license revocation, professional misconduct)
• Discrimination law (e.g., ageism, age discrimination and organ transplant, religious exemptions, disability access in healthcare, gender identity discrimination)
• Human rights law (e.g., right to health, mental health in detention)
• Constitutional law (e.g., healthcare as constitutional right, abortion as constitutional right)
• Global health law (e.g., WHO regulations, pandemic treaties)