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For a successful economy, the interaction between research and its application in practice plays a key role. The aim of this paper is to analyze the institutional factors of patent activity at universities in the Czech Republic. The following five factors were selected for detailed investigation: budget from government, number of employees: professors, associate professor, and assistant professor, number of researchers and other employees, number of students (PhD, master, and bachelor), technology transfer workers. The patent activity analysis used methods of retrospective data analysis in the field of R&D activities, unstructured interviews, and statistical data processing. Following from the basic characteristics of the collected data, patent activity is related to the nature of universities, where technical universities are in leading positions in the monitored period of industrial-legal protection. However, the importance of encouraging innovation activity across all disciplines is crucial. The result of monitoring the dependency shows that a relationship of efficiencies and patent output is influenced by the size of a university. Secondly, there can be observed that technology transfer efficiency contributes more to the patent output that research staff efficiency.

The high quality of public health improves not only healthy life expectancy, but also the productivity of labor. The most important part of the health care sector is the medical technology industry. The aim of this study is to analyze the current situation in the medical device industry in Europe, its potential strengths and weaknesses in the context of topical economic and demographic development. The contribution specifies an analysis of the economic state of the medical device industry in the context of demographic development of European Union's macroeconomic indicators and views of experts in the field of medical device development, concerning the opportunities for entities involved in the medical device market. There is fierce competition on the European market. The innovative activity is stable and well regulated by responsible authorities. Worldwide, the medical device market is expected to grow.

Petra Maresova,1 Marek Penhaker,1,2 Ali Selamat,1,3 Kamil Kuca1,41Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Králové, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic; 2Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Technical University of Ostrava, Poruba, Czech Republic; 3Faculty of Computing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia; 4Center for Biomedical Research, University Hospital Hradec Králové, Hradec Králové, Czech RepublicAbstract: The high quality of public health improves not only healthy life expectancy, but also the productivity of labor. The most important part of the health care sector is the medical technology industry. The aim of this study is to analyze the current situation in the medical device industry in Europe, its potential strengths and weaknesses in the context of topical economic and demographic development. The contribution specifies an analysis of the economic state of the medical device industry in the context of demographic development of European Union's macroeconomic indicators and views of experts in the field of medical device development, concerning the opportunities for entities involved in the medical device market. There is fierce competition on the European market. The innovative activity is stable and well regulated by responsible authorities. Worldwide, the medical device market is expected to grow.Keywords: technology context, medical device, Europe, expenditure, review

&ldquo ; Novichoks&rdquo ; is the name given to the controversial chemical weapons supposedly developed in the former Soviet Union between the 1970s and the 1990s. Designed to be undetectable and untreatable, these chemicals became the most toxic of the nerve agents, being very attractive for both terrorist and chemical warfare purposes. However, very little information is available in the literature, and the Russian government did not acknowledge their development. The intent of this review is to provide the IJMS readers with a general overview on what is known about novichoks today. We briefly tell the story of the secret development of these agents, and discuss their synthesis, toxicity, physical-chemical properties, and possible ways of treatment and neutralization. In addition, we also wish to call the attention of the scientific community to the great risks still represented by nerve agents worldwide, and the need to keep constant investments in the development of antidotes and ways to protect against such deadly compounds.

The purpose of this study was to analyse the subjective perception of stress burden in family caregivers, especially those caring for disabled and elderly persons. The tool for quantifying the burden was the Meister questionnaire, which describes the basic dimensions of overload in ten items. These were divided into three factors: overload, monotony and the non-specific factor. The research tool was a standardised questionnaire distributed via a snowball method to a group of 484 family caregivers who cared for a person with disability. The findings show that they have to largely rely on the support of social services. Their burden is characterised by the prevalence of the overload factor. The findings also indicate that there is an urgent call among health professionals to identify and treat caregivers' psychological distress by applying relevant intervention strategies, which could reduce this distress and prevent caregivers' burnout. Future research should concentrate on the efficacy of intervention strategies which would reduce the overall burden of family caregivers and nurture the family as a whole.

Increasing demand for modern treatments and significant profit margins are strong incentives for investors and producers. However, the production and use of medical devices is subject to a number of laws, regulations, strict standards, and certification processes. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze patent activity based on the example of the selected country (Czech Republic), compare it with selected foreign countries, and discuss the development of this industry in the context of new medical device regulation (MDR) implementation. The paper is based on the theoretical concept of the relationship between regulation and innovation. The main challenge in the implementation of the new medical device regulations lies in the area of innovation. This is because most innovative research in the medical device sector is undertaken by small to medium enterprises (SMEs) rather than by large companies. SMEs are more vulnerable than big companies when it comes to development because the accompanying administrative costs can be so high that it may force the company to leave the market. Given that the main reason for the existence of economic regulations are various forms of market failure, which occurs when market mechanisms do not lead to results that benefit society, any attempts to redress this situation should naturally lead to greater benefits for society and hence benefits for the given industry as well.

Hana Tomaskova,1 Jitka Kuhnova,2 Richard Cimler,1,3 Ondrej Dolezal,1 Kamil Kuca3 1Faculty of Informatics and Management, 2Faculty of Science, 3Center for Basic and Applied Research (CZAV), University of Hradec Králové, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a slowly progressing neurodegenerative brain disease with irreversible brain effects; it is the most common cause of dementia. With increasing age, the probability of suffering from AD increases. In this research, population growth of the European Union (EU) until the year 2080 and the number of patients with AD are modeled.Aim: The aim of this research is to predict the spread of AD in the EU population until year 2080 using a computer simulation.Methods: For the simulation of the EU population and the occurrence of AD in this population, a system dynamics modeling approach has been used. System dynamics is a useful and effective method for the investigation of complex social systems. Over the past decades, its applicability has been demonstrated in a wide variety of applications. In this research, this method has been used to investigate the growth of the EU population and predict the number of patients with AD. The model has been calibrated on the population prediction data created by Eurostat.Results: Based on data from Eurostat, the EU population until year 2080 has been modeled. In 2013, the population of the EU was 508 million and the number of patients with AD was 7.5 million. Based on the prediction, in 2040, the population of the EU will be 524 million and the number of patients with AD will be 13.1 million. By the year 2080, the EU population will be 520 million and the number of patients with AD will be 13.7 million.Conclusion: System dynamics modeling approach has been used for the prediction of the number of patients with AD in the EU population till the year 2080. These results can be used to determine the economic burden of the treatment of these patients. With different input data, the simulation can be used also for the different regions as well as for different noncontagious disease predictions. Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, population modeling, system dynamics, prediction model