Special Interest Group
Ethics and Law
E-mental health initiatives are extremely varied and wide-ranging, with new innovation and adaptation occurring at pace. Diverse and constantly evolving technologies bring an equally diverse set of ethical and legal issues which demand novel ethico-legal considerations.
The Law and Ethics of eMental Health Special Interest Group draws together both health and law experts to champion this emerging and important conversation, and to cultivate tangible outputs that will guide future strategy and implementation in this space.
Join The Conversation
With collaboration at the heart of what we do, we encourage open discussion from our community, and invite all eMHIC members to ask questions, share their knowledge or pose their thoughts on all eMental Health topics.
We have a dedicated forum for discussing Ethics and Law in eMental Health where you can browse topics of conversation or start your own topic.

Group Chairs and Co-Chairs

Richman Wee
LLB (Otago, 1993)
Grad Dip in Arts (Moral Philosophy) (University of Auckland, 2003)
LLM (Houston Health Law Center, University of Houston, 1996)
Richman Wee’s work in the past two decades has primarily centred on ethico-legal, regulatory and public policy issues involving human health and research, and is now extending to data law.
He has been covering the waterfront of legal, ethical and policy issues relating to medico- and cyber-technologies, and has been engaged in a suite of roles from policy advisor, to academic researcher, research management and ethics, and research funding advisor.
He is currently based at Te Piringa – Faculty of Law, Waikato University, for the Law Foundation (NZLF) Technology in Legal Education for New Zealand Project that involves all law faculties/schools in NZ. He was involved with the pioneering NZLF’s cyber and data initiative, as Project Manager for the Information Law and Policy Project.
He was also a researcher and project manager for the NZLF’s multidisciplinary and international Human Genome Research Project: Law, Ethics and Policy for the Future.
He served as the first Policy Advisor to the Health Research Council of NZ. For 2021, Richman is also teaching the health research ethics paper, CLNR402, at Victoria University of Wellington.
Group Chairs and Co-Chairs
Richman Wee
Richman Wee
eMHIC's work in Ethics and Law
eMHIC's exclusive
Position Statement on Ethics and Law
Authors: Piers Gooding and Richman Wee (in discussion with the eMHIC Board and collaborators)*