Dr Aisling McMahon’s work on patents and access to Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and diagnostics, has been cited in the UK House of Commons Library Research Briefing debate pack in advance of a recent debate within the House of Commons on the ‘UK Government’s role in ensuring innovation and equitable access to treatment within the international covid-19 response’. The debate took place on 5th November 2020.
Dr McMahon has published two recent open access articles on these issues: an article entitled ‘Patents, access to health and COVID-19 – The role of compulsory and government-use licensing in Ireland’ in the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, and an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics on ‘Global equitable access to vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for COVID-19: The role of patents as private governance’.
She has also published two shorter articles on patents and access to Covid-19 healthcare in the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog: ‘Patents, private governance and access to vaccines and treatments for Covid-19’ and ‘Covid-19, Patents & Healthcare: The Need for A (Bio)ethics Space within Patent Law’. Most recently, Dr McMahon published an article in the NILQ blog on ‘Access to COVID-19 vaccines and medicines: patents and compulsory licensing in the spotlight’ arguing for the need for a deeper consideration of the role patents and effective national compulsory licensing measures in the context of access to healthcare in Ireland against the backdrop of recent positive reports on the effectiveness of several proposed Covid-19 vaccines.
Dr McMahon is an Assistant Professor in Maynooth University Department of Law where she teaches modules on patents, health and biotechnologies, and contemporary issues in medicine and the law. Her research focuses on medical and patent law, and she is particularly interested in the role of patents as private governance instruments and the impact of intellectual property holders decisions on healthcare.