Bianca Rose Phillips is a lawyer who has developed expertise in a niche space of digital health and medical law. As part of her doctoral program, Bianca has been examining legislative law-making practices in digital health to ascertain the values and principles that are considered by law-makers as part of the law-making process. In addition to her many publications, she has presented at the VOH Summit, Harvard Medical School, and has appeared as a guest on podcasts including the Becker Group Women’s leadership podcast.
Bianca, welcome onboard the team as our Digital Health Today Ambassador!
- Tell us a bit more about yourself, your background and what you’re doing now.
In addition to being a lawyer and aspiring barrister, I am a mother of two daughters who are 1 and 3 years old.
Qualifications: LLB (Deakin), BComm (Deakin), GradDipLP (The College of Law), Lawyer & Officer of the Supreme Court of Victoria, LLM in Medical Law (UniMelb), Scholarly Academic in Law, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.
- How did you get involved with digital health?
I was working as a legal practitioner when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. The cancer was caught early and she was able to be treated and is doing well. However, the experience of sitting in all of her appointments, seeing her being treated and other patients going through more aggressive treatments, and all that such journey entails, made me passionate about the idea of early detection before a disease manifests. I became less interested in drafting legal documents like commercial contracts and more interested in understanding the reason why medical laws are drafted in the manner that they are, the evolution of laws and their interpretation. As such, I enrolled in a Master of Laws to become educated in medical law. As a student at Melbourne Law School I was taught by an internationally renowned Professor (who was an idol of mine for many years prior), and she encouraged me to pursue digital health law publications after excelling in her medical law unit. Additional life experiences since that time have furthered my interest in digital health (and happy to discuss with those who contact me).
- Tell us about where you come from and some of the health and technology innovation that’s happening there.
I am from Melbourne, Australia. A major Australian project is the federal government’s My Health Record System, which is a centralised health record database accessible by health practitioners around the country. Every Australian has a My Health Record unless they notify the government that they don’t wish to have one, opting out of the system.
- What are some of your top interests and what should people contact you about?
Contact me for consulting, teaching or networking. AI. Voice technologies. Telemedicine. Genetic testing. Gene editing. EHR systems. Laws relating to the beginning of life. Contact me if you are a USA or Australian based company as my research focuses on those jurisdictions. For those based in other jurisdictions, I may be able to help you connect to the relevant experts.
Also happy to give advice on work or travel in Australia. Even though I am from Melbourne (a great city with wonderful coffee), I like to frequently travel to stunning Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays QLD, where I go snorkeling and kayaking in aqua waters and see a range of australian wildlife. Queensland also happens to lead many digital health initiatives.
- Tell us a bit more about yourself, your background and what you’re doing now.
