Scientific Program – WAML Congress 2026, Antwerp, Belgium

Expanding Boundaries of Health Law: Access, Innovation and Interdisciplinarity

Theme 1 – Equitable access to healthcare

• Structural and systemic barriers (e.g., affordability, access for remote or hard-to-reach communities, health literacy gaps, unequal access to digital technologies)
• Access in low- and middle-income countries (e.g., legal strategies for scaling health services, patent law vs. equitable access to essential medicines)
• Balancing individual and collective rights (e.g., patient autonomy vs. public health measures such as vaccination mandates and compulsory treatment for mental illness or substance abuse)
• Culturally appropriate care (e.g., non-Western healing traditions, preferences of persons with a migrant background, religious practices, language barriers)

Theme 2 – Technology & legal innovation

• Artificial Intelligence in healthcare (e.g., diagnostics, clinical decision support, liability)
• Health data governance (e.g., health data sharing, health data portability, compliance with European Health Data Space and General Data Protection Regulations)
• Care outside the hospital (e.g., remote monitoring, mobile health)
• Robotics and digital therapeutics (e.g., robotic surgery, smart pills)
• Genomic medicine (e.g., gene editing, legal status of genetic data)
• Third party reproduction and embryo research (e.g., surrogacy, gamete donation, embryo models and embryo-like structures, organoids, 14-day rule) 
• Emerging biotechnologies (e.g., neurotechnology, nanomedicine)
• Transgender & intersex care (e.g., legal recognition, access to care, rights of minors)

Theme 3 – Intersections between health law and other disciplines of law

• Legal medicine (e.g., forensic evidence, expert testimony, autopsy law, status of body parts, protection of the corpse, body donation to science)
• Hospital law (hospital governance, financing, Infrastructure regulation, disaster preparedness)
• Gender and health law (gender equality in healthcare access, inclusion on medical research, violence against women, maternal rights vs. foetal interests)
• Sports law (e.g., doping regulation, concussion protocols, athlete health protections)
• Insurance law (e.g., status and duties of insurance company physicians, medical confidentiality, coverage disputes, prevention)
• Tort law (e.g., medical malpractice, hospital liability, loss of a chance, defensive medicine)
• Criminal law (e.g., unauthorised medical practice, healthcare fraud, euthanasia and assisted suicide, abortion)
• Pharmaceutical law (e.g., clinical trials, off-label use, patent disputes, drug approval processes, market access)
• Travel law (e.g., cross-border healthcare, 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, antitrust issues, market distortions in healthcare)
• Disciplinary law (e.g., professional misconduct, license revocation)
• Tax law (e.g., VAT on medical services, cross-border healthcare and taxation, tax incentives for medical innovation)
• Discrimination law (e.g., age discrimination in access to healthcare, religious exemptions, disability rights in healthcare, gender discrimination)
• Human rights law (e.g., right to health, mental health protections in detention, involuntary treatment and placement)
• Constitutional law (e.g., recognition of healthcare as a constitutional right, abortion as a constitutional right)
• Global health law (e.g., international health treaties, pandemic governance, prevention)