FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INDIANAPOLIS — At the invitation of President Barack Obama, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law professor Nicolas Terry attended the recent White House summit that marked the first anniversary of the Precision Medicine Initiative.
Professor Terry is the Hall Render Professor of Law and executive director of the Hall Center for Law and Health, a unit of the McKinney School of Law, located at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. His participation in the summit was the latest in a number of public engagements that have put the professor and his expertise at the apex of health care policy dialogue in this country.
The Precision Medicine Initiative, announced by President Obama during his 2015 State of the Union address, is a research effort that drops the traditional one-size-fits-all-approach to tackle improving health and disease treatment by tailor-making treatments that address genetic, environmental and lifestyle differences among individuals.
“I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine — one that delivers the right treatment at the right time,” Obama said in his address. “In some patients with cystic fibrosis, this approach has reversed a disease once thought unstoppable. So tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier. We can do this.”
Professor Terry’s research interests lie primarily at the intersection of medicine, law and information technology. His recent scholarship has dealt with health privacy, social media and health, big data, and health care fragmentation.
During the White House summit, held Feb. 25, Terry attended a plenary discussion that included Obama as a panel member and participated in a closed-door session for a small number of privacy and security experts with White House information technology leadership and government agency representatives.
“The IU McKinney School of Law’s Health Law program is one of the best in the nation, and I’m so proud that the executive director of our Hall Center for Law and Health, professor Nicolas Terry, was invited to attend this summit,” said IU McKinney Dean Andrew R. Klein. “Professor Terry is recognized as one of the country’s leading academics in the field of health information technology law, and it’s a wonderful thing for our students to have someone with his expertise on the faculty.”
Terry’s public engagements related to health care issues this year include several media interviews:
- NPR quoted Terry in its Jan. 4 broadcast about repeat health-privacy violators.
- Forbes magazine’s Feb. 17 article quoted Terry on the issue of employers using big data to determine which employees are or may become pregnant.
- WTHR Channel 13 featured Terry in its Feb. 18 coverage of privacy concerns regarding the use of security cameras.
- Terry’s scholarship on mobile health, particularly liability issues involving wearable devices and apps, will be published in the forthcoming Annuals of Health Law.
In addition to traditional media, Terry produces the podcast “The Week in Health Law” with professor Frank Pasquale of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. The podcast, recently ranked in the Top 25 in the health care category, is available for download at iTunes and Podbean and can be listened to at Stitcher Radio.
The professor is also one of the permanent bloggers at HealthLawProf and at Harvard Law School’s Bill of Health. His recent publications are available on the Social Science Research Network, and he can be followed on Twitter.
Terry’s public engagements have attracted the attention of his peers. He was the recent subject of the member spotlight of ASLME Insider, the monthly newsletter of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics.