The future of healthcare and bioscience depends on unleashing the value of important discoveries. Our immersion in the sector strengthens our clients’ positions in the brave new world of digital health, telemedicine, and medical technology disruption.

An integrated industry approach

What are the stress points in the business of healthcare and medicine? The development of therapies and new models for revenue, care, and payment is among the most pressing. We represent providers, companies, and institutions advancing solutions.

We operate like a legal think tank for the sector

To protect life science clients’ breakthroughs in antibodies, bioprocessing, cancer, diabetes, and other critical areas, we apply our full bench strength—from patent infringement offensives to product liability defenses. Our counsel provides legal advice regarding strategic patent portfolios and efforts to commercialize them via technology transfers and collaborations.

For health systems and healthcare providers, we navigate you through critical transactions, agreements, and mergers and acquisitions that stabilize and grow operations to increase access to care. Our experience with federal and state regulatory compliance helps healthcare clients prevent missteps—from antitrust triggers to accreditation risks, and more.

A legal nexus for the business of health

Schwabe is home to one of the first healthcare law teams in the Pacific Northwest. As counsel to public and private companies and startups for decades, we can address the chain reaction of legal issues that accompany new business models and scientific discoveries, including:

• Technology transfer and licensing
• Regulatory compliance
• Patent and intellectual property protection
• Portfolio commercialization
• Credentials and licensing
• Employment practices and claims
• Litigation and infringement claims
• Mergers, acquisitions, and combinations
• Privacy and data security
• Product liability
• Tax strategies
• Corporate governance
• Antitrust

New ideas on evolving opportunities with big data

Schwabe’s deep experience in the health, bio, and life sciences helps us identify significant opportunities and ways for you to participate in these fields. Our legal bench is a unique collaboration of business-minded, trained scientists. We are passionate about industry transformation and understand the laws necessary to achieve it.

To sharpen your competitive edge, we manage collaborative partnerships, worldwide patent rights, regulatory compliance programs, vendor data assessments, and more.

Wrangling big data is an overarching challenge. Our legal advice steers clients through the potential of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other technologies to meet the demand for data interoperability, transparency, and privacy.

Stewardship for a fast-moving industry

Uncertainty abounds in life sciences and healthcare. Our weekly case summary on patent rulings, Fresh From the Bench, is one of several ways we stay in touch. We are active in industry associations, including:

• Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), national and regional
• Oregon Business & Industry, Health Policy Committee
• Oregon Health Care Association (Long-Term Care)
• Washington State Society of Healthcare Attorneys
• Oregon Medical Association

• Created Oregon’s first Accountable Care Organization (ACO) qualified for participation in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.
• Represent hospitals and specialty medical groups in joint ventures, both for-profit and charitable, and physician-hospital organization (PHO) formations.
• Advise on acquisition of physician practices, physician recruitment and employment, and compliance with the Stark and Anti-Kickback laws and the Internal Revenue Code.
• Represent numerous clients nationally in state and federal governmental investigations.
• Provide HIPAA compliance advice and data breach coaching.
• Represent hospitals and clinics in anti-trust litigation, unfair trade practices litigation and contract disputes, as well as individual clients in peer review disputes and licensure matters for the health professions.
• Assist clients in drafting, submitting and obtaining approval for "Form A" filings with Oregon Insurance Division.
• Drafted form insurance policies and applications for insurance clients, including Affordable Care Act "Qualified Health Plans,” and life settlement contracts.
• Created one of the nation’s first Patient Safety Organizations to enable the aggregation and analysis of clinical data from a dozen specialty practices nationwide.
• Prosecute patents for major universities and medical ‎schools involving technologies ranging from medical ‎devices to diagnostics/assays to treatments to biochemical and pharmaceutical innovations.‎
• Represent Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in the preparation and prosecution of patent applications directed to medical devices, diagnostics, therapeutics, drug delivery and imaging.
• Assisted medical device company RevMedx with the development and prosecution of its patent portfolio. We successfully ‎guided RevMedx through the process to obtain its first patent on X-Stat (a device that can ‎instantly plug bullet wounds to prevent victims from bleeding out before medical help arrives), ‎an invention that was named an Invention of the Year by Popular Science. 

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