Innovation in the Life Sciences
The life sciences generate tremendously exciting new innovations—drugs to cure cancer, algorithms to predict disease and recommend treatment, and medical devices that can pull individual cells out of the bloodstream for analysis. These technologies are the object of a complex array of laws that govern their invention, development and deployment. This seminar will provide an introduction to this set of laws, focusing on how they provide incentives for and shape the process of innovation. We will likely consider some combination of intellectual property, FDA gatekeeping and regulatory exclusivity, insurance reimbursement, prize systems, and potentially other regimes. While there are no prerequisites, including no requirement for a technical background, students should be prepared to grapple with both biomedical technologies and with the mix of law and policy questions presented.