Nightview of a bookshop close to the University in central Salzburg. True for adults too.

Retrospect

Cancer Registry, Data and Cancer Care

The most important issue that consumes a lot of my attention at the moment is an article and a press release on potential legal changes in the administration of (expensive) cancer treatments.

I came into possession of a proposal for this law (of unknown origin so far), introducing a steering committee making “recommendations” on expensive cancer treatments. This raises very important legal and ethical questions - how can one calculate survival time in relation to costs? - including that the committee recommending these treatment plans and medications is supposed by law to get access to pseudonymized data from the cancer registry.

This is of utmost importance (to me) as it has significant impact on data collections for one purpose (statistics on cancer) that are - out of the blue - used for another purpose (recommendations on cost assessments). A lot is still unclear here, including the status of this process. I will try to shed some light on this, also in an #arsboni session on Saturday.

If you happen to have any info here, please share it with me, the minister’s tweets on the matter are not really helpful.

BTW: There are reports that in particular minister Rauch is supposedly blocking people on X/Twitter who don’t do anything “illegal” but only criticise him. This would be an excellent PHD topic - a legal assessment of such social media behavior (if these allegations were true) of government officials. I would love to read and supervise this. Hans-Peter Lehofer wrote on other facets of this (or a similar) topic recently.

AI, AI, AI

I attended lots of conferences and gave some presentations on AI,

one at Medical University Vienna

one at University of Performing Arts in Vienna

and one (actually two, because there was a working dinner with a dinner speech before the event) in Salzburg

When preparing these gigs, I met virtual influencers on Instagram with more than 2.7 Mio followers (Miquela, for example), learned about the (lack of) AI-strategies at Universities and followed rumors that the AI act might get finally stuck on disputes on foundational model regulation. This open letter, mostly from French and German indstry, is, in particular, interesting.

When traveling to Salzburg (train and bicycle, very convenient; you can see the bicycle in the background) here :-),

I spent some waiting time in Cafe Westend and learned that it had been nicely renovated.

profil

The text on minister Edtstadler’s suggestion to introduce a new provision into the Austrian Criminal Code was published and received some positive feedback, and some criticism, but no reaction whatsoever from the adressee.

#arsboni

The session from the laundry with Prof. Dr. Peter Bußjäger on the Constitutional Court’s decision on COFAG was recorded and published as expected - we had a very nice afternoon together and I learned quite a bit about privately organised public administration (“Privatwirtschaftsverwaltung”).

Fintech

Beck, the publisher, informed us, that the 3rd edition of a huge volume on “Fintech” is in print now. It can be ordered here. I am a proud coauthor; thank you, again, to Dr. Žiga Škorjanc, who did most of the work here.

Prospect

#arsboni

Friday, at 10.00am I am going to meet Prof. Dr. Felix Hanschmann and talk on status, class and social capital in law (German).

Saturday at 11.00 am, as mentioned, we will be dealing with costs in cancer treatment (German).

Project Meetings

I have quite some internal project meetings this week, some of them with new partners, such as BBMRI but also elder ones such as Genomed4all (of which I am a pro bono external advisor).

Cyberspace Conference, Brno

I will spend Friday and Saturday at the Cyberspace Conference at Masaryk University in Brno. The University has a department on law and technology, similar to ours and we are collaborating closely. I am chairing 2 sessions on “New formats of digital legal education” and I am very proud that my department will present a lot of teaching initiatives there (including remote only courses, hackathons, legal clinics etc.). Late registrations are still possible - Brno is a beautiful city alway worth a visit.

Covid19 Data Platform

The advisory board I am a member of will meet later this week for an internal meeting.

VetmedUni

Prof. Dr. Peter Roth from VetmedUni Vienna is organising a lecture series. I will speak om Thursday, Nov. 23, at 4.30 pm on “Rechtliche Aspekte generativer KI in Lehre und Forschung” - AI is everywhere, even in animals :-).

DSA-Transposition Law

The moment I am finishing this I am sitting in the Ministry of Justice’s festival meeting room (behind the door on the right).

One of the agenda points is the ministerial draft law on the transformation of the Digital Services Act into Austrian Law. You may expect quite some interesting legal debates on this important matter soon, I would assume.

Rainbows

It was (and is) again clearly too warm in Vienna. When riding on a bicycicle it feels more like a nice, sunny day in April.

But there was some rain in between, too. The outcome were beautiful rainbows I want to share of two with you.

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)