Conceptualizing throughput legitimacy: procedural mechanisms of accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness in EU governance

This symposium demonstrates the potential for throughput legitimacy as a concept for shedding empirical light on the strengths and weaknesses of multi-level governance, as well as challenging the concept theoretically. This article introduces the symposium by conceptualizing throughput legitimacy as an ‘umbrella concept’, encompassing a constellation of normative criteria not necessarily empirically interrelated. It argues that in order to interrogate multi-level governance processes in all their complexity, it makes sense for us to develop normative standards that are not naïve about the empirical realities of how power is exercised within multilevel governance, or how it may interact with legitimacy. We argue that while throughput legitimacy has its normative limits, it can be substantively useful for these purposes. While being no replacement for input and output legitimacy, throughput legitimacy offers distinctive normative criteria— accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness— and points towards substantive institutional reforms.Published versio

Automated test system for special-purpose batteries verification

The paper describes the automated test system, designed for a special-purpose batteries examination, along with some exemplary test results. It presents requirements from energy supply sources for mobile devices working in coal mines spaces and its most crucial parameters, justifies the need for deploying a proposed solution, presents its hardware and software architecture and finishes with the batteries test outputs and some observations made

Beyond Participation: Evaluating the Role of Patients in Designing Oncology Clinical Trials

Historically, subject matter experts and healthcare professionals have played a pivotal role in driving oncology clinical trials. Although patients have been key participants, their deliberate and active contribution to the design and decision-making process has been limited. This scoping review aimed to examine the existing literature to scope the extent of active patient engagement in the design of oncology clinical trials and its corresponding influence on trial outcomes. We conducted a systematic search using two databases, namely MEDLINE (Ovid) and EMBASE, to identify relevant studies exploring patient engagement in cancer-related clinical research design. We identified seven studies that met the eligibility criteria. The studies highlighted the benefits of active patient involvement, such as improved recruitment strategies, and the attainment of more patient-centered trial outcomes. The influence of patient involvement varied from tangible developments like patient-friendly resources to indirect impacts like improved patient experiences and potentially higher adherence to trial intervention. The future of clinical trials should prioritize patients’ values and perspectives, with regulatory bodies fostering these practices through clear guidelines. As the concept of patient centricity takes root in oncology research, the involvement of patients should evolve beyond mere participation

The European patent system: dealing with emerging technologies

In light of recent controversial patent decisions in biotechnology, this article argues that the current European patent examination and opposition procedures do not suffice to balance the patent system These procedures do not provide sufficient guidance for patent examiners to deal effectively with the emerging life science technologies. The European Patent Office needs to instill more self-reflection into the patent system and foster interaction between the Office and patent stakeholders. In this respect, we propose that the EPO should establish an ex-ante, patent-granting advisory body that would consist of multidisciplinary staff drawn from various technical fields, and collaborate closely with the scientific community and other national bodies. It is expected that such an advisory body would provide an input to the existing patent system, since it would anticipate, control and reduce the possibility that patent examiners would issue low-quality patents with huge socio-economic consequences