Advisory &
Consultancy

On 15 April 2026, Louisa Ghevaert attended Progress Educational Event “What Does the NICE Fertility Guideline Update Mean For You?”.  This followed the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) publication of its 2026 update to its Fertility Guideline (the first comprehensive update since 2013). This event looked at a range of issues including whether this will improve access and NHS funding for fertility treatment across England, the new endometriosis fertility pathway, expansion of fertility preservation pathways at a primary care level, increased focus on male factor infertility and diversity and inclusion (to include transgender and non-binary individuals).

On 28 November 2025, Louisa Ghevaert publishes an article “Preimplantation Embryo Gene Editing: Is This A Step Forward?” which assesses recent developments and ramifications of this rapidly evolving frontier in human reproduction and the future.

On 11 April 2025, Louisa Ghevaert attended the Expert Advisory Group Board Meeting supporting PRECAS – a collaborative research project funded 2023-2026) by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) – UKRI and based at De Montfort University. This research project investigates the emergence of expanded carrier screening (ECS) for preconception use amongst the general population, and its wider implications. It will provide much-needed evidence to develop theory, stimulate debate and shape forthcoming regulatory and policy approaches to reproductive care in this novel field in the UK and internationally.  This project is led by Professor Cathy Herbrand and includes a team of nine researchers and a partner the Progress Educational Trust (PET).

On 2 April 2025, Louisa Ghevaert attended the launch event for new community WEALTH: Women In Health. It’s mission is to build a powerful community of women across the full value chain of health and investment to advance the health, wealth and position of women in the world. WEALTH was created because whilst women drive approximately 80% of major healthcare decisions, women are underrepresented and underserved across the industry and this needs to change. Female founders face significant barriers to innovation, with women-led startups across Europe and the U.S. receiving just 2% of venture capital funding. There is also still little funding available for female reproductive health and unconscious bias which lies deep in society in the home, workplace and at a political level which holds women back.

On 26 March 2025, Louisa Ghevaert attends Progress Educational Trust’s event “Is Fertility Treatment A Solution To Population Decline?”. Fertility is continuing to decline across the globe and birth rates are steadily falling. Fertility rates are now at the lowest in the UK since World War II. As such, this event looked at a range of factors influencing declining global fertility and birth rates and debated whether fertility treatment can bridge the gap and solve population decline.

On 11 March 2025, Louisa Ghevaert was invited to attend the Nuffield Council on Bioethics workshop “Epigenetics in Human Reproduction”. This event looked at the use and implications of epigenetics in human reproduction. It considered the inter-relationships between the reproductive environment, the epigenome, long-term health and assisted reproductive technologies.

On 26 February 2025, Louisa Ghevaert attends Progress Educational Trust’s event “What Can The Fertility Sector Learn From The Infected Blood Scandal And Inquiry?”. The Contaminated Blood Scandal was one of the worst health scandals in the UK from the 1970s – 1990s, resulting in thousands of deaths from infected blood transfusions and blood products. This event looked at the similarities between fertility (eggs, sperm and embryos) and blood, the findings of the Infected Blood Inquiry in the UK and the lessons to be learned across the fertility sector to ensure optimum patient safety and care.

On 20 November 2024, Louisa Ghevaert attends Progress Educational Trust’s event “The Future of Womb Transplants”. This event looked at the important and pioneering uterine transplant work that has been undertaken over the last 10 years, starting with the world’s first successful human womb transplant and live birth in September 2014.

23 October 2024, Louisa Ghevaert attends Progress Educational Trust’s event “Whole Genome Sequencing at Birth: Implementing The Generation Study”. This event provided a progress update on this landmark population cohort genome sequencing study “Newborn Genome Sequencing At Birth: The Generation Study Progress Update”.

23 October 2024, Louisa Ghevaert is interviewed on 8 BBC Radio Stations discussing issues and legalities associated with prenatal DNA testing and other forms of DNA testing “BBC News: DNA Testing and the Law, ‘I could have lost my child’ after flawed DNA test”. This followed news of a woman who received flawed DNA test results identifying the wrong man as her unborn baby’s father, resulting in a lengthy legal dispute over custody of her child. The woman was reportedly one of dozens of women who received unreliable DNA test results from a Canadian laboratory which advertised online.

4 September 2024, Louisa Ghevaert attends BioNews’ 25th birthday celebration at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, Holborn, London. This invitation-only event was well attended by a community of leading experts and supporters from across the fertility, medical, scientific and academic sectors. This special event included speeches looking at which developments in fertility, genomics and embryo research will have the greatest impact over the next twenty five years, as well as the presentation of the inaugural Marcus Pembrey BioNews Writing Prize.

14 March 2024, Louisa Ghevaert attends FemTech Law Spring ’24 Connect event at 22 Bishopsgate in London. It brought together creative minds, leaders, experts and entrepreneurs from across the digital, genomic, scientific and female health and consumer spaces. Its mission is to foster vision, inspiration, change, solutions and impact across the women’s health and technology sectors.

6 December 2023, Louisa Ghevaert attends Progress Educational Trust’s AGM 2023 entitled “How Much Change Do We Want? Updating Fertility Embryo And Surrogacy Law”. This event addressed the origins and history of fertility law in the UK and the challenges moving forward given ongoing rapid developments in science, medicine and assisted reproductive technology, complex issues including extending the 14-day rule for embryo research, the case for removing donor anonymity at birth, use of “add-ons”, fertility treatment funding and expanding the HFEA’s powers to regulate fertility treatment delivery at UK fertility clinics.

9 November 2023, Louisa Ghevaert attends Public Policy Projects Global Genomics Conference 2023, which explored the complex issues and challenges associated with realising the benefits of genomic sequencing both in the UK and globally, as well as the benefits of collaboration across sectors, among organisations, between countries and international diplomacy. Importantly. it also focused on the need for ensuring diversity and equity across the genomic ecosystem.

19 September 2023, Louisa Ghevaert attends Genomics England Research Summit 2023, which brought together the genomics community to continue to advance research and drive forward much-needed healthcare benefits and genomic medicine for patients, parents, children and families.

12 June 2023, Louisa Ghevaert attends Decoding The Future of Women Conference 2023 as part of London Tech Week.  Its mission was to positively change the FemTech sector by changing the narrative and addressing key issues and themes. What does the future hold for women? What does future fertility, longevity, scientific discovery and sustainability look like? It asked contributors (including investors, corporate innovators and cutting-edge start-ups) to bring their most visionary self to the conference.

6 – 8 March 2023, Louisa Ghevaert attends the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the Francis Crick Institute, London, organised by the Royal Society, the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, the US National Academies of Sciences and Medicine and the World Academy of Sciences. The Summit facilitated a global discussion on somatic and germline genome editing, including developments in clinical trials and genome editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9.

26 October 2022, Louisa Ghevaert visits Oxford University Nuffield Department of Population Health for a “Conversation with Professor Sir Rory Collins Chief Executive of the UK Biobank”. 

28 September – 1 October 2022 – Louisa Ghevaert attended Illumina’s Inaugural Genomics Forum 2022. This groundbreaking event in San Diego, USA, gathered together global leaders from across the genomics, healthcare, scientific, technology, data and policy sectors to advance and improve genomic healthcare, with spotlight speeches by former US President Barack Obama and Bill Gates. You can read more in Louisa’s blog “Illumina Genomics Forum 2022: A Conversation with Former US President Barack Obama” and in “Illumina Genomics Forum 2022: Spotlight Speaker Bill Gates” and “Perspectives on Illumina’s Genomics Forum 2022”.

22 June 2022 – Louisa attended Progress Educational Trust’s 30th birthday party at The Royal Society of Medicine in London. The event was sponsored by Ferring Pharmaceuticals and attended by a community of leading experts and supporters from across the fertility, medical, scientific, genomic, legal and academic sectors. Speeches were delivered by Baroness Ruth Deech DBE, PET Trustee Professor Robin Lovell-Badge CBE and PET Director Sarah Norcross.

1 November 2019 – Louisa Ghevaert joined a panel of expert speakers at LaingBuisson’s Fertility Forum 2019 in London and delivered a lecture on the future legal and regulatory landscape for fertility treatment in the context of the genomics revolution.

9 April 2019 – Louisa Ghevaert attended a Public Policy Projects (PPP) meeting at The Law Society in London on the future of fertility policy in light of the genomics revolution, with a key note speech by Professor Lord Robert Winston.