Bernadette Richards

Bernadette Richards, BA, LLB (Hons), PhD is the Associate Professor of Ethics and Professionalism and Director Higher Degree Research at the University of Queensland Medical School. Prior to that she was working on the Future Health Technologies Project at the Singapore ETH Centre, Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE), Singapore, exploring trustworthy data governance. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at the Queensland University of Technology Australian Centre for Health Law Research. She is recent past member of the NHMRC’s Australian Health Ethics Committee, the Embryo Research Licensing Committee and current member of the Dietary Guidelines Governance Committee. She was previously a member of the South Australian Voluntary Assisted Dying Taskforce and was also the Chair of the Mitochondrial Donation Expert Working Committee and was involved in the proposed amendment to the law. Bernadette was the President of the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law (AABHL, 2014-2024) and is now the ‘Teaching Ethics’ Stream Lead and has been awarded Life-Time Membership. She is an active researcher, having completed major projects on organ donation, consent to treatment and legal issues around innovative surgery. She is a chief investigator on four current major grants, MRFF 2021 Genomic Health Futures Mission, “Ethical governance for clinical and genomic data”, NHMRC Partnership Grant, “Strategies for the inclusion of vulnerable populations in developing complex and sensitive public policy: A case study in Advance Care Planning”, NHMRC Ideas Grant, 'The algorithm will see you now: ethical, legal and social implications of adopting machine learning systems for diagnosis and screening' and ARC Discovery Grant, 'Support or Sales? Medical Device Representatives in Australian Hospitals'. Her co-authored book, ‘Technology, Innovation and Healthcare: An evolving relationship’ was published in February 2022 and she has over 100 other scholarly publications.