Dr Annie Sorbie

Senior Lecturer in Law (Health Law and Ethics)

LLB, Dip Law, PhD

Office hours:

Research Leave Academic year 25/26

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 3633

Email: asorbie@ed.ac.uk

View my publications

Annie Sorbie is a Senior Lecturer in Health Law and Ethics at Edinburgh Law School, with a research and teaching portfolio. Prior to her career in academia, she had over 14 years’ experience in legal practice in the health, social care and regulatory sector (September 2001 – December 2015, Partner from 2009), with a speciality in professional regulation.  She has extensive experience of providing strategic advice on matters of health regulatory practice and policy.

Dr Sorbie’s research interrogates two key and related areas, namely health research regulation, with a focus on the role of the public interest, and the regulation of individual health and social care professionals. She has been called upon to provide independent expert advice to a range of public and third sector bodies, including recently the Infected Blood Inquiry (on the duties of candour), and the Scottish Government (on unlocking the value of public sector data for public benefit). 

Recent funded projects include:

• Witness to harm, holding to account: Improving patient, family and colleague witnesses’ experiences of Fitness to Practise proceedings (Funder: NIHR)
  
  This interdisciplinary project studied the experiences of witnesses who give evidence in professional conduct hearings about care provided by health and social care professionals. Dr Sorbie led a work package which explored how the legal and policy frameworks of the statutory regulators of social work and social care professionals in the UK approach the question of whether a witness at a Fitness to Practise hearing should be considered as ‘vulnerable’, and the steps that may be taken in response.  For further details see this article.
   
• Regulating for the workforce of the future: addressing the healthcare workforce crisis in Scotland and Ireland (Funder: RSE and RIA)
  
  Led by Dr Sorbie and Dr Mary Tumelty (Cork) this project engaged with regulatory stakeholders in Ireland and Scotland to explore the relationship between: professional regulation; its role in addressing the workforce crisis (focussing on the medical profession); and the promotion of an economy that values the wellbeing of patients and professionals (a wellbeing economy). For details see our project website, including our policy brief.
   
• Re-framing KEI: Fostering a Culture of Care, Critical Thinking, and Change through Decolonial Perspectives (Funder: Wellcome)
  
  Led by Dr Hephzibah Israel, Dr Stanislava Dikova and Dr Annie Sorbie, this study considers the way that Knowledge Exchange and Impact (KEI) is conceptualised, funded and delivered, bringing decolonial perspectives to bear on KEI work. For more comprehensive details about our research, please see our website.

Dr Sorbie is a Deputy Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law, and co-leads its policy portfolio. From 2018 – 2024 she served on the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh’s Patient Safety Group as a lay adviser.  In 2024 she was appointed by the BMA’s Council to their Medical Ethics Committee.