Leading healthtech lawyer joins Mills & Reeve Oxford office
Leading national law firm Mills & Reeve has appointed partner Gayle Curry to support the growth of its commercial healthtech practice.
Gayle, who is an experienced commercial health lawyer with an expertise in healthtech, has joined from Mishcon de Reya where she was a partner in the firm’s commercial and technology groups.
Her appointment also sees a return to Mills & Reeve for Gayle, who was previously head of commercial health at the Birmingham office. In her new role, Gayle will have a national healthtech role, but will be based at the firm’s Oxford office.
Healthtech is a rapidly growing area in the health and care sector. Accelerated by the Covid pandemic, it is now recognised as a crucial and exponentially growing part of the health economy with the market expected to be worth almost £25 billion by 2029. Gayle is well known in the UK independent health sector and health tech sector markets and particularly so in the Oxford technology ecosystem, which is one of Europe’s most successful life sciences and technology clusters, attracting world leading life sciences, healthtech and technology businesses.
Mills & Reeve’s Oxford office is growing rapidly and, since opening in 2022, has recruited more than 20 lawyers and a number of internal relocations to create a highly-skilled offering across several sectors including education, life sciences, technology, real estate/real estate investment, corporate and commercial and private clients. Gayle’s practice will complement, in particular, the firm’s existing and growing practices in the life sciences and technology sectors in Oxford.
Peter McLintock, head of Mills & Reeve’s Oxford office, said: “It is a great pleasure to not only welcome Gayle to the Oxford office but back to Mills & Reeve. Her reputation in the healthtech sector is unrivalled and Gayle’s appointment is key to our ambitious growth plans to have a full-service offering with dynamic market-facing lawyers delivering outstanding service to clients.”
Gayle added: “I’m excited to be joining Mills & Reeve at a time when health and care tech businesses are delivering transformative innovations to improve service efficiency and make lives better like never before. It’s a great opportunity to be joining such a strong team that is very well placed to help our clients achieve their ambitions.”
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An innovation and governance gap is opening up between businesses that realise the potential of GenAI and those that see its impact as limited, our new report has found.
According to The Critical AI Window, organisations that don’t find ways to capitalise on the potential of AI to drive innovation and growth run the risk of being left behind. As a result, competitive edge is at risk.
Our report shows that less than a third of businesses (31%) are using GenAI, with only one-fifth (22%) seeing it as high value.
Paul Knight, partner at Mills & Reeve said: “There is a clear divide amongst businesses – between those that have bought into AI and are building systems and processes around it, and those that are still unsure of its impact beyond mid- to low-value tasks, such as reducing administration and improving efficiencies and productivity.
“This divide is opening up an innovation and governance gap, as early innovators seize on the opportunities that AI presents. While our research shows that the number of businesses using GenAI is likely to rise to 72% by 2027, the lag in performance between then and now could become insurmountable.”
The report highlights the biggest concerns felt by businesses over AI adoption. The majority (90%) are concerned about inaccuracy, more than eight in ten are worried about safety risks (85%), such as cyber attacks, with the impact on future employment also a cause for concern. However, despite 83% of respondents stating that are worried about regulatory compliance, only 31% of businesses have a risk mitigation strategy in place.
Paul added: “The explosion of GenAI has seen a raft of regulations introduced across the world, with more likely, and all of them subject to change as AI understanding develops. In the UK, the regulation of AI relies on existing legal frameworks such as intellectual property, data protection and contract law, highlighting the growing need for these frameworks to be adapted to address the novel risks and complexities introduced by AI technologies. All this suggests that there will be no steady state for regulation for some time.”
However, the risk of not complying is significant, both reputationally and financially. Within the EU, under the EU AI Act, for example, violations can cause administrative fines of €35 million or 7% of total global turnover, whichever is greater.
“There is a real need for businesses to set their own guardrails as legislation in the UK catches up. If they don’t fully understand the legal and ethical boundaries – whether around data protection, intellectual property, or equality law – the consequences could be profound. A single misjudgement could expose the organisation to group litigation.”


