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Translation in healthcare: ethical, legal, and social implications

Edited by Donna Dickenson, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Michael Morrison

New technologies are transforming and reconfiguring the boundaries between patients, research participants and consumers, between research and clinical practice, and between public and private domains. From personalised medicine to big data and social media, the new kinds of interactions enabled by these platforms hold the potential to empower citizens, challenge long-standing ideas such as privacy, and raise fundamental questions about how the translational patient pathway should be organised.

The ‘Translation in Healthcare: Exploring the Impact of Emerging Technologies’ conference 2015 hosted by the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX) at the University of Oxford brought together a wide range of voices to discuss and think more deeply about the technological, legal, ethical, and social challenges raised by new technologies in healthcare. In this cross-journal collection articles are brought together from BMC Medical Ethics and BMC Medical Genomics.

This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal’s standard peer-review process. The Guest Editors declare no competing interests. 

  1. Because no single person or group holds knowledge about all aspects of research, mechanisms are needed to support knowledge exchange and engagement. Expertise in the research setting necessarily includes scien...

    Authors: Madeleine J. Murtagh, Joel T. Minion, Andrew Turner, Rebecca C. Wilson, Mwenza Blell, Cynthia Ochieng, Barnaby Murtagh, Stephanie Roberts, Oliver W. Butters and Paul R Burton
    Citation: BMC Medical Ethics 2017 18:24
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  2. Innovations in technology have contributed to rapid changes in the way that modern biomedical research is carried out. Researchers are increasingly required to endorse adaptive and flexible approaches to accom...

    Authors: Isabelle Budin-Ljøsne, Harriet J. A. Teare, Jane Kaye, Stephan Beck, Heidi Beate Bentzen, Luciana Caenazzo, Clive Collett, Flavio D’Abramo, Heike Felzmann, Teresa Finlay, Muhammad Kassim Javaid, Erica Jones, Višnja Katić, Amy Simpson and Deborah Mascalzoni
    Citation: BMC Medical Ethics 2017 18:4
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  3. Research suggests that multidisciplinary genomic tumor boards (MGTB) can inform cancer patient care, though little is known about factors influencing how MGTBs interpret genomic test results, make recommendati...

    Authors: Michelle L. McGowan, Roselle S. Ponsaran, Paula Silverman, Lyndsay N. Harris and Patricia A. Marshall
    Citation: BMC Medical Genomics 2016 9:71
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  4. New technologies are transforming and reconfiguring the boundaries between patients, research participants and consumers, between research and clinical practice, and between public and private domains. From pe...

    Authors: Michael Morrison, Donna Dickenson and Sandra Soo-Jin Lee
    Citation: BMC Medical Ethics 2016 17:74
    Content type: Editorial Published on:

  6. Health research increasingly relies on organized collections of health data and biological samples. There are many types of sample and data collections that are used for health research, though these are colle...

    Authors: Kieran C. O’Doherty, Emily Christofides, Jeffery Yen, Heidi Beate Bentzen, Wylie Burke, Nina Hallowell, Barbara A. Koenig and Donald J. Willison
    Citation: BMC Medical Ethics 2016 17:54
    Content type: Review Published on:

  8. As in other countries, the traditional doctor-patient relationship in the Japanese healthcare system has often been characterised as being of a paternalistic nature. However, in recent years there has been a g...

    Authors: Victoria Coathup, Harriet J. A. Teare, Jusaku Minari, Go Yoshizawa, Jane Kaye, Masanori P. Takahashi and Kazuto Kato
    Citation: BMC Medical Ethics 2016 17:51
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  9. Whole-exome sequencing (WES) consists in the capture, sequencing and analysis of all exons in the human genome. Originally developed in the research context, this technology is now increasingly used clinically...

    Authors: Gabrielle Bertier, Martin Hétu and Yann Joly
    Citation: BMC Medical Genomics 2016 9:52
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  10. Biobanks have been heralded as essential tools for translating biomedical research into practice, driving precision medicine to improve pathways for global healthcare treatment and services. Many nations have ...

    Authors: Don Chalmers, Dianne Nicol, Jane Kaye, Jessica Bell, Alastair V. Campbell, Calvin W. L. Ho, Kazuto Kato, Jusaku Minari, Chih-hsing Ho, Colin Mitchell, Fruzsina Molnár-Gábor, Margaret Otlowski, Daniel Thiel, Stephanie M. Fullerton and Tess Whitton
    Citation: BMC Medical Ethics 2016 17:39
    Content type: Review Published on:

  11. Over the past 25 years, there has been growing recognition of the importance of studying the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) of genetic and genomic research. A large investment into ELSI research...

    Authors: Jessica Bell, Mirko Ancillotti, Victoria Coathup, Sarah Coy, Tessel Rigter, Travis Tatum, Jasjote Grewal, Faruk Berat Akcesme, Jovana Brkić, Anida Causevic-Ramosevac, Goran Milovanovic, Marianna Nobile, Cristiana Pavlidis, Teresa Finlay and Jane Kaye
    Citation: BMC Medical Ethics 2016 17:37
    Content type: Debate Published on:

  12. The language of “participant-driven research,” “crowdsourcing” and “citizen science” is increasingly being used to encourage the public to become involved in research ventures as both subjects and scientists. ...

    Authors: J. Patrick Woolley, Michelle L. McGowan, Harriet J. A. Teare, Victoria Coathup, Jennifer R. Fishman, Richard A. Settersten Jr., Sigrid Sterckx, Jane Kaye and Eric T. Juengst
    Citation: BMC Medical Ethics 2016 17:33
    Content type: Debate Published on:

  13. The use of an overall risk assessment based on genomic information is consistent with precision medicine. Despite the enthusiasm, there is a need for public engagement on the appropriate use of such emerging t...

    Authors: Stuart G. Nicholls, Holly Etchegary, June C. Carroll, David Castle, Louise Lemyre, Beth K. Potter, Samantha Craigie and Brenda J. Wilson
    Citation: BMC Medical Genomics 2016 9:25
    Content type: Research article Published on: