Health and life sciences

Within the broader corporate team, we have a specialist team that focus solely on health and social care transactions. We deliver innovative solutions for a number of national and global corporate clients across the health and social care sector, as well as emerging life sciences providers.

Health care transactions

We advise on a full range of transactions – from larger cross- border projects to smaller scale reorganisations and changes to capital structure. Given the importance of ensuring the work is undertaken correctly so that it does not create issues on a future audit or sale, our tailored approach focuses on both quality and efficiency.

Health company secretarial

We have a dedicated company secretarial team who can take care of your day-to-day company secretarial needs e.g. preparation and filing of confirmation statements, maintaining statutory registers on a class-leading hosted software platform.

Health investors

Our in-depth knowledge of the sector, including the routes to market for providers of medical devices or software solutions, means that we often undertake focused due diligence projects for international investors.

What we can do for you

• 15-minute quick call service for free access to our corporate healthcare specialists to bounce ideas off us for speculative projects and access a second opinion or talk about experiences in the market, which does not require substantive advice.
• Advise on startups and incorporation of new life sciences businesses through our innovative Grow programme.
• Act on any acquisitions, disposals and/or investments.
• Advise on reorganisations.
• Company secretarial support.

We advise on the regulation of care provision, helping you meet the standards set by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), product compliance and safety, environmental regulation and health and safety.

Proactive regulatory advice

Much of our advice is proactive, guiding clients on the development of new products and services, entry to the UK market, business restructuring or in respect of ongoing regulatory compliance. We’re regularly asked to advise on CQC registration requirements and processes, medical devices and similar regulations, MHRA regulation and NHS provider licensing.

Regulatory and criminal investigations

We also assist clients when things don’t go to plan, advising and representing them in respect of regulatory and criminal investigations, enforcement action and prosecutions. We work closely with colleagues across the firm including in our corporate and commercial, employment and civil litigation teams.

What we can do for you

• Provide advice on regulatory requirements early in the development of a new product or business structure.
• Provide training on how to deal with inspections by a range of regulators.
• Review contracts to ensure that they protect your business from regulatory liabilities.
• Advise on CQC registration requirements and assist in the process.
• Advise on registration and licensing requirements for medical devices.
• Provide urgent and responsive advice for incidents and investigations.

Our specialist health and life sciences team can help you implement the requirements of the data protection legislation. We advise on the day-to-day use of personal data related to employees, patients or other people, through to some of the very sensitive privacy and sharing issues which all organisations in the health sector face.

We have extensive experience advising on privacy issues associated with apps, research projects and sharing across international boundaries. More recently, our work has involved looking at duties and obligations related to cloud-based storage and anonymisation to enable learning to be shared across the health sector.

What we can do for you:

• Undertake a thorough review of your information law policies and procedures to make sure you comply with Information Commissioner’s Office guidance and health specific legislation.
• Assist you in meeting your data protection obligations to specific data subjects, including employees, patients and whistle-blowers.
• Advise on risk areas of proposed data sharing relationships with third parties and how to mitigate these risks through robust diligence and written contracts. This includes advice on undertaking and completing Data Protection Impact Assessments.
• Developing clear policies and agreements on data sharing and anonymisation for wider sharing within the system for learning and research purposes.
• Supporting compliance with the Freedom of Information Act obligations.

The most common types of training that we’re asked to provide include:

• Data protection overview;
• Personal data breach training;
• Subject access request training; and
• Sharing data for learning and research training.

We’re an expert team of digital health project lawyers who specialise in advising the health sector on its digital procurement requirements. We understand the sector and, working closely with our commercial health and procurement health teams, we’re able to provide holistic legal advice tailored to client needs. We advise and identify the unique risks that arise in the health sector and provide mitigation strategies accordingly.

We can advise on:

• Contractual approaches to the procurement of digital solutions in light of Integrated Care Systems (ICS) and the soon to be created International Patient Summary.
• Digital procurements using the Crown Commercial Services (CCS) model contract and various other agreements through existing framework mechanisms including G-Cloud and the Technology Services 3 framework.
• Contractual risk mitigation mechanisms during implementation and incentivised delivery mechanisms.
• Structures and governance frameworks and mechanisms for managing service performance.
• Negotiation strategies.
• Key risks on existing arrangements or close to sign contracts.
• All aspects of negotiating, drafting and finalising contracts that may be required across the digital procurement spectrum.

Our experienced and award winning IP team helps life sciences companies and public bodies to protect, commercialise and enforce their intellectual property.

We help them capture and own intellectual property. We help draft collaboration agreements, establish innovation capture schemes, and can assist with the IP elements of complex software projects.

We’re also experts on licensing and commercialising technology.

Intellectual property litigation

Our patent litigation team has worked on complex life sciences and life sciences disputes, from inhalers to HIV drugs. We’ve also helped various health clients with copyright and trade mark disputes.

We work with a huge range of life sciences businesses, from startups to NHS trusts and regulators. From straightforward licences to complex projects and litigation, we’ll tailor our offering to deliver the service you need.

Our clients include both IT suppliers and private and public sector customers of IT systems. We understand the financial risks and business disruption involved in IT projects. We work to manage these risks and maximise your prospects of success, whatever your objective.

Our specialist health litigation lawyers provide comprehensive support and advice on issues involving litigation and other forms of dispute resolution. We have deep and broad expertise, ranging from providing support to put distressed IT projects back on track, through to advising on step-in rights, termination and exit strategies where projects cannot be rescued.

We’ll work with you to identify the parties’ commercial interests in a dispute and then find creative ways to deliver solutions aligned as far as possible to each of those interests. We can help you keep a troubled project on track.

We offer a range of advice including:

• Advice on liability for project delays and changes to project scope. We recommend the strategic utilisation of contractual mechanisms such as relief notices, invoice dispute notices and change control notices to protect your position where the customer’s requirements change post-contract.
• Strategic advice in relation to liabilities of third parties, such as third party contractors engaged to rescue the project.
• Advice on alternative dispute resolution, breach of warranty, injunctions, breach of restrictive covenants and fraud and misrepresentation claims.

We’ll support you and tailor our service to meet your needs. We recognise that the key to doing this is over a sustained period. Here are some examples of how we can add value and specific ways that we’ll create value for you.

Instant In-house

We appreciate that you may need to resource your legal support in an innovative way. Our Instant In-house package may be of interest to you, as we can act as your extended in-house team.

Find out more

On-line training and other resources

Your teams will have access to a range of resources on topical issues including legal updates and training videos. These can be emailed out as soon as they’re available to those opting in.

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Ad hoc advice/helpline

We appreciate the need to have a 'sounding board' for legal issues and matters being dealt with in-house. We encourage early engagement with our clients and find that this avoids problems later down the line.

Legal updates and bulletins

Our team can provide you with email bulletins and legal updates to keep you informed about recent cases and changes in the law. These are produced as and when changes arise and are sent to you in an email.

Bespoke training

We can offer tailored bespoke training on areas that directly impact your business. We can deliver these through Teams, Zoom or in person. We have included details of some areas we think will be of interest to you, and are happy to discuss those areas and how they’d benefit your team.

Events programme

Your team will also have access to our wide range of training resources through our general seminar and webinar programme. For an up to date programme please visit www.brownejacobson.com/ training-and-resources/training/ training-and-events.

Ongoing communication

Your feedback is extremely important in terms of the advice we give, the service you receive, how we manage our relationship with you and the additional services we provide.

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