Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon

Areas of interest

Bioethics, Applied Ethics, Empirical Bioethics, Health Policy, Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Health Technology Assessment, Citizen Engagement, Conflict of Interest, Patient-Oriented Research, Ethics of Drug Marketing and Commercialization, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility

Education

• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Faculty of Law, McGill University, 2020
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Law School, Harvard University, 2017 to 2020
• PhD Biomedical Sciences (Bioethics Option), Faculty of Medicine, Université de Montréal, 2017
• MA Bioethics, School of Public Health, Université de Montréal, 2013
• BSc Physics, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Université de Montréal, 2010

Biography

Bioethicist by training, Dr. Bélisle-Pipon is conducting research at the interface of health policy, citizen and patient engagement in research and health governance, as well as business practices. His professional experience, having worked for both the pharmaceutical industry and the government, provided him with an insider’s understanding of the ethical, policy and societal dimensions of health technology development and assessment. Dr. Bélisle-Pipon uses both empirical and conceptual bioethics methodologies to make recommendations on the appropriate management and resolution of ethical issues for health regulators and industry decision-makers. He carried out his CIHR-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at the Harvard Law School (2017-2020) and pursued a second fellowship at McGill University (2020). He was member of the Board of Directors of Québec Health Research Fund and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Bioethics. Dr. Bélisle-Pipon joined the Faculty of Health Sciences in 2021.

Research interests

Dr. Bélisle-Pipon aims at pushing the boundaries of bioethics by offering apposite critical thinking on the most pressing issues and by engaging directly with a variety of stakeholders to produce scientifically rigorous scholarship yielding great social utility. He seeks to adopt innovative and originative approaches that directly involve stakeholders (government, industry, clinician, patient, citizen) for addressing complex, topical and multifaceted societal issues. His research interests focus largely on health policy ethics, with particular attention to disruptive technologies, responsible health governance, and patient and citizen engagement in ethical debates. He has worked on the ethics of pharmaceutical marketing, conflict of interest, public health ethics, patient engagement in research and the science-society interface. His normative gaze has since turned to the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data in health.

He is currently working primarily on four research endeavors.

• He is leading a partnership research initiative – in collaboration with colleagues at Harvard, Dalhousie and Laval universities – to support health technology assessment (HTA) agencies in identifying, considering and managing ELSI arising from the evaluation and deployment of AI in the health care system.

• He works to foster citizen dialogue in AI ethics. He currently co-develops a new citizen dialogue tool, called the Moral Compass, to raise citizen awareness on the ethical issues involved in the use of AI and big data in health and to allow citizens to take position on these moral issues.

• He works on conflicts of interest of experts advising governments on public health policy. He develops ethical guidelines to better guide expert advice to public decision-makers, particularly on issues such as AI systems in health, immunization, etc.

• He examines patient centricity in the health industry, especially by studying the ESLI of pharmaceutical companies (in)directly involving patients in their decision-making and governance of product development and commercialization.

Drawing on conceptual, empirical and participatory approaches, his research uses a variety of methodologies (e.g., surveys, Delphi, interviews, case studies) to bridge knowledge gaps and to foster effective and mutually beneficial partnerships (between organizations, communities and scholars) conducive to allowing the participation of all in the resolution of ethical issues. In addition, Dr. Bélisle-Pipon strives to diversify his knowledge mobilization practices. One of such ways is through arts. He considers that bioethics and arts benefit from being intertwined. Since aesthetics and ethics can both resonate with individuals’ sensitivity, arts represent a great medium to nurture discussions on difficult moral subjects more easily than scientific publications and conventional academic dissemination. For instance, he spearheaded the project AIship, which led to an art-science exhibition pairing internationally-renown artists and leading bioethicists to work together to raise awareness and to foster a public reflection on the ethical issues surrounding AI in the health sector. Dr. Bélisle-Pipon is hence interested in a diversity of approaches and endeavors that may contribute to both facilitating informed public discussions and seeking to collectively resolve societal and ethical issues in health.

Teaching interests

For Dr. Bélisle-Pipon, teaching is a way to empower students and trainees by providing them with a strong background in bioethics and fostering their critical thinking. His goal is to contribute to developing and furthering their normative lens, so that they can better justify their decisions and ensure that their actions are socially useful and relevant to the actors on the ground (policy-makers, health care professionals, patients, corporate decision-makers and so on) they seek to support. He aims at capacitating students and trainees in developing great scholarship as well as in cultivating transferable research and professional skills.

Bioethics; applied health ethics; ethical, legal and social implications of health technologies; health policy ethics; research ethics; patient-oriented research; empirical bioethics.