Overview
The Centre for Medical Ethics and Law (CMEL) develops new ideas and solutions in response to the big ethical, legal and policy questions of medicine and health.
CMEL is the first cross-faculty interdisciplinary institution of its kind in the region. It was founded in 2012 by the LKS Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Law at The University of Hong Kong as a joint inheritor of their vibrant intellectual traditions dating back to 1887 and 1969 respectively.
Today, CMEL brings together bioethicists, academic lawyers, medical scientists, and other scholars to conduct cutting edge bioethical and legal research and contribute to policy development in flagship areas like digital health and emergent technologies, mental health and capacity, and population and global health.
Research, teaching and knowledge exchange—CMEL’s core initiatives—aim to ensure that developments in biomedicine and public health will be underpinned by ethical and legal considerations.
Mission
CMEL’s mission is to become a global leader, located in East Asia, in the study of medical ethics and law, broadly defined.
Research
To conduct high-quality and cutting edge research in the ethics, law and policy of medicine and health, especially in the flagship areas of digital health and emergent technologies, mental health and capacity, and population and global health.
Teaching
To nurture outstanding students through its LLM (Medical Ethics and Law Specialisation), research supervision, and other interdisciplinary teaching and learning activities at The University of Hong Kong.
Knowledge Exchange
To contribute to research-driven policy development in biomedical research, healthcare and public health, to serve as a public platform for debates on the big ethical, legal and policy questions of medicine and health, and to offer continuing education on state-of-the-art topics that lie at the interface of medicine, bioethics and the law.