I’ve got new merch and Daisy likes it almost as much as I do (see below).

Retrospect

#Covid19

I am - as almost everyone else - in a way or another affected by the #Covid19-situation in Austria.

“Abwassermonitoring” has a paradigm of a bad graph on this (as it doesn’t have any values on the y-axis), but the image is still “impressive”.

In addition to staff, students, colleagues, business partners etc. around me laying in bed, one of the people really close to me is currently sick so that I needed to find Paxlovid. Almost impossible in Vienna nwadays.

I shared my experiences on Twitter (and elsewhere).

The story went viral on Twitter (> 120.000 views, > 500 likes) but also - more importantly - made it into legacy media such as Puls24, KronenZeitung, Kurier, heute, Der Standard, Die Presse (Paywall) - correctly - reporting that the hut is burning once again (and even ORF joined the crowd, being a little late to the party).

The strangest sentence in the many reports, excusess, explanations etc. of this unbelievable situation is this one from Der Standard stating that, once again, after 4 years of pandemic, we are still lacking of the most fundamental data needed to know what’s actually going on - in this case how many packages of Paxlovid are still available, a secret seemingly unknown to everybody in this country.

This has, inter alia, also stromg implications for a legal assessment of the presented draft law on health reform that passed the health committee this week.

I am very concerned about this and I am (still) not alone:

You might want to see (again) this #arsboni video on the matter:

The political aftermaths of the Paxlovid disaster is still ongoing, see, for example, DieKrone or Puls24 or Ärztekammer.

Edtstadler, § 353d German Criminal Code

There are some news on the question whether the German provision forbidding the publication of official documents in criminal procedings. (§ 353d StGB) is compatible with human rights legislation, case law and the German Constitution.

As forseen by many (including me) but ignored by Federal Minister Edtstadler, the German provision is now (again) challenged due to its (potential) unconstitutionality:

The complaint is highly worth reading.

#arsboni

Two very intersting remote sessions and one from the laundry happened this week:

Florian Philapitsch (again) on the (unconstitutional law on ORF)

Saskia Ebert and Max Petras on open science in law

and Mona Zaher on job opportunities for law students in matters of public international law.

LLM-Graduation

Our vice rector for students, Prof. Dr. Christa Schnabl, and our dean for students, Prof. Dr. Franz-Stefan Meissel, were so kind to honor the students from 3 LLM-programmes, including the one on information and media law in the big festival hall of UNIVIE.

Patient Autonomy

We had another preparatory meeting for a conference (in German) planned for January.

These are the key facts:

Patienten*innenautonomie mit/wegen/trotz Digitalisierung?

• Termin: Dienstag, 30. Jänner 2024, 14:00 bis 16:00 Uhr
• Ort: Dachgeschoss des Juridicums, Schottenbastei 10 - 16, 1010 Wien

Speakers:

• Botschafter Prof. Dr. Martin Selmayr (European Commission)
• DDr. Meinhild Hausreither (Austrian Health Ministry)
• Olaf Heinrich (CEO Redcare Pharmacy)
• DI Arnold Herzog (AGES Medizinmarktaufsicht)
• Dr. Gerhard Jelinek (Patione Ombudsperson Vienna) (angefragt)
• Andreas Huss, MBA (ÖGK-Head) (angefragt)

OEAWI

The Austrian Agency for Research Integrity (OEAWI) had their yearly general assembly meeting this week. I participated as a member of its Commission. The yearly report of the Commission’s avtivities was presented and will be published soon.

Digital Policy and Regulation

Prof. Dr. Katja Hutter, Dr. Georg Serentschy and me presented a study on how to possibly reorganise the Austrian administrative landscape in the domain of cooperation among the different authorities (data protection, media, competition, electronic ciommunication, AI, etc.) in tthe light of the upcoming European legislation. We received some positive first feedback from important stakeholders.

Prospect

12/12/23

I will have a very interesting event on Tuesday in the morning, It’s still confidential, but I hope you will spot it. :-)

COMMUTE

I will be in Bonn at Fraunhofer SCAI on Thursday/Friday for the kickoff meeting of a new European project we may work for: Commute. The Scientific Coordinator, Prof. Dr. Martin Hofmann-Apitius, describes the project in a LinkedIn post as follows:

“The COMMUTE consortium will focus on identifying and accumulating evidence for a link between COVID and neurodegeneration and try to test and validate some of the mechanism hypotheses underlying this link; about 50% of the work is on data and AI, whilst the other 50% is on biomarkers, cellular assays and organoid test systems (wet lab).”

I am very excited about this project as it will help me to merge many of my interests, in particular AI and Covid.

#arsboni

We have 2 sessions in the coming week and both are very close to my personal interests.

On Monday, December 11, at 18.00 CET we’ll speak about medical, legal and ethical challenges of ME/CFS (German).

And on Wednesday, December 13, at 17.00 CET, I will discuss the issue of Art. 353d German Criminal Code (“Zitierverbot im Strafverfahren”) with Oliver Loksa who sees the issue (very?) different from me.

Data Protection Moot Court (DPMC)

On Tuesday, I will serve as a jury member for the DPMC first time this year. The Case is (inter alia) about Scoring, which fits outstandingly well after today’s decision from the CJEU on SCHUFA (press release). Thank you so much to the founders, the organisatiopnal team for 2023 and the sponsors of this marvelous (teaching) event!

We will brodcast the Grand Finale, schedules for December 18, 19.00 CET via YouTube

Meet and Greet on AI

UNIVIE organises a series of “Meet and Greet” at Salettl in the Weihnachtsdorf on campus (“Altes AKH). Om Tiesday, 12/12, from 16.30-18.30 it will deal with how to use AI at UNIVIE in the future. I will be there (at least for some time).

Daisy

doesn’t like the weather but appreciates my new hood and looks very much forward to how many tasty treats next week will bring.

Have a wonderful week!

Kind regards

Nikolaus (Forgó)