Health Law FAQs

The same questions in the field of Health Law arise again and again; for this reason, the French-speaking Swiss radio station RSR1 developed an FAQ forum in partnership with the Institute of Health Law. The topics covered can be viewed on Planète santé, by clicking Droit et santé in the left hand column.

Institute of Health Law Documentation Centre

- Opening hours

The Documentation Centre is open on Monday and Thursday morning during office hours. Outside of these hours, you can contact the Institute’s secretariat (office 003). For additional information, please contact the library.

The collection must be consulted in situ. A photocopier (at 10 cents per copy) and scanner (free) are available, as well as a computer for bibliographic research. Books can be ordered at the centre or via Rero (the regional library network) and inter-library loans.

- Catalogue and acquisitions

Two online catalogues are available: the Réseau des bibliothèques de Suisse occidentale (RERO) and the Réseau des bibliothèques neuchâteloises et jurassiennes (RBNJ). Both catalogues provide online help for different types of research.

The new OPAC of the RBNJ also allows users to search only within the Institute’s library: choose the option "limiter ma recherche à une ou plusieurs bibliothèques" (“limit my search to one or more libraries”), then select "Uni Neuch. Inst. droit de la santé".

In addition, the Law Library, with which the Institute works closely, releases lists of the Institute’s new acquisitions, which you can follow via RSS.

You may also consult the list of periodicals (journals, yearbooks etc.) available at the Institute.

- Location, services and bibliographies

The Institute of Health Law’s Documentation Centre is located within the Institute, at Rue A.-L. Breguet 1, Office 012.

The Centre’s collection includes at least 3,000 books, 80 ongoing periodicals and CD-Roms and video cassettes. It is the only such facility in Switzerland, holding the entire collections for specialist reviews such as Medical Law International, Revue générale de droit médical, Droit & santé and Droit, Déontologie & Soins; the tables of contents of some of these reviews also appear here.

These reviews, alongside a hundred others, are regularly mentioned in Revue suisse de droit de la santé (RSDS), of which the Institute is the academic editor.

The Documentation Centre’s collection covers all areas of Health Law, especially patient rights, medical liability, care providers, the practice of healthcare, transmissible disease, the monitoring of biomedical progress, health insurance, and so forth.

Other approaches to health problems also feature in this collection, such as ethics, sociology, economics, statistics, ...

Around two thirds of the books deal with Swiss law, and the other third different national and international laws.

For an alternative, and excellent, legal survey of Health Law, see Institute of Law and Health, University of Paris Descartes.

- Contact

Please contact the Library, or the law Library