Antenova, the integrated antenna and RF solutions company, announced the availability of the gigaNOVA® range of high performing WiMAX antennas for embedded mobile device applications. Antenova’s gigaNOVA range WiMAX antennas are ideally suited for WiMAX at 2.3-2.4 GHz and 2.5 –2.69 GHz.

“Antenova is a leader in providing high performance antennas and RF antenna modules for the global wireless communication and consumer electronic device markets,” stated Greg McCray, CEO of Antenova. “With our gigaNOVA range of standard antennas, we are able to offer customers access to the broadest range of standard off-the-shelf antennas for Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, GSM, ISM900 and now WiMAX applications, which means faster time to market with an already field-proven antenna solution.”

Antenova offers these high performing WiMAX antennas in a range of sizes and surface mount options to provide designers and manufacturers greater flexibility in meeting their design and performance objectives. Antenova’s internal WiMAX antennas for the 2.3-2.4 GHz and 2.5-2.69 GHz bands are ideally suited for an extensive range of embedded mobile applications, such as mobile handset, PDAs, laptops, ultra mobile PCs (UMPCs), PC cards, digital cameras, media players, portable gaming devices and converged devices such as personal navigation/infotainment products. To complement the wide range of internal WiMAX antennas, Antenova also offers two high performing external WiMAX antennas that are ideal for development kits or for use with home access points.

McCray added, “Antenova is committed to satisfying the global handset, laptop and wireless consumer electronics markets by providing innovative, cost effective and highly efficient antenna products and integrated RF solutions. With our new WiMAX antennas, we are also able to target consumer electronics manufacturers that are looking to introduce mobile broadband-enabled products.”

For more information please visit http://www.antenova.com

County Durham PCT was established on 1 October 2006 from 5 predecessor PCTs and the two PCTs, which work closely together and share key corporate services and management roles, now support 86 GP Practices and serve a population of approximately 600,000. . The PCTs’ role is to engage with local people to improve health and well-being, and reduce health inequalities; ensure that patients have access to and choice of a range of high quality health services by commissioning services within allocated resources; and directly provide high quality responsive and efficient services where this gives best value.

“We have highly complex data,” said Roger Haydon, Head of Information Services for County Durham PCT. “Our minimum data set for a single patient comprises around 300 fields, which typically grows to over 500 fields once the meta data and other derived data is added. We commission services from acute NHS trusts as well as indpendent sector providers. As a result, we have many different sources of data. Each provider has different handling processes, which means we have to manage and sort through numerous sets of inconsistent data, be able to understand and examine it all as well as spot any anomalies. This was not only time consuming but difficult to manage, as you had to know what you were looking for. We did a market evaluation of several products over a three month period and selected Datanomic’s dn:Director as our platform of choice.”

As part of its drive for accuracy and consistency in line with the Department of Health’s mandated requirements, County Durham PCT and Darlington PCTs needed to automate and streamline the handling of their data quality management processes and achieve high levels of efficiency. Previously, data quality checks were handled through the use of multiple SQL queries in response to issues identified by data analysis after data had been loaded to the data warehouse.

“The risks arising from inaccurate data are understandably high,” added Haydon. “If data is incorrect, a patient could be allocated the wrong treatment code. This not only determines patient care, but also the associated cost to the commissioner and can affect the budget for the PCTs and GP Practices. As an extreme example, a mistake in the dates of a patient’s hospital stay could lead to an in-patient spell of 2 years rather than 2 weeks and can cost a hundred thousand pounds rather than a thousand pounds but other errors are often a lot smaller and a lot more difficult to identify. Our main source for secondary care data is the NHS SPINE Network. These data sets are provided to us through the secondary uses service. During any quarter, we will get an initial download of the first shot of data from providers followed by refreshes of data throughout the quarter until the data is frozen at the end of the period. We are pulling down substantial data sets that are used constantly and which a large number of records.”

The PCTs’ Data Management Team will go live with Datanomic’s dn:Director in March 2008 and it will be used on a daily basis to work with a range of data flows.

“Our objective is to be a world class commissioning organisation with a fully modern business intelligence system,” said Haydon. “In our system we have many reference tables holding codes, values, tariffs and GP names and addresses and this data changes constantly as these are kept up to date. These reference tables sit inside our data warehouse and, with dn:Director, we can automatically pick up any changes, without having to manually import the tables into the dn:Director environment. This was an important consideration for us, which no other vendor could fulfill. Working in the NHS means handling very complicated and sensitive data. You can’t afford to wait for someone to tell you there’s a problem. You need a dedicated tool to help ensure accuracy and quality, and help make best use of limited public sector resources, which is why we’ve adopted dn:Director as our platform of choice for forensically examining data.”

Described by industry analysts as ‘the most flexible data quality product on the market’, dn:Director offers a comprehensive interactive learning environment for organisations to profile, audit, cleanse, parse, match and merge both structured and unstructured data, using clearly defined processes and full accountability to data owners and stakeholders. Using the data quality management and reporting features of dn:Director, enterprises have gained measurable business benefits such as reductions in costs and decreased customer or employee churn, and have implemented fast and effective solutions to data issues caused by market and regulatory changes.

Using dn:Director, non-IT personnel, such as data stewards, business analysts and owners of data, are able to identify and rectify the compromised data which place enterprise operations at risk. As a single product that encompasses profiling, analysis, transformation, cleansing and matching, dn:Director enables better understanding, improvement, protection and control of data quality for all types of structured and non-structured, real-time and non-real time information.

“As part of our initiative, we are also completely rebuilding our data warehouse, building online data cubes and upgrading the delivery of business intelligence to the PCT,” concluded Haydon. “Datanomic will be an important tool in the process of rebuilding that system and in defining the rules used to routinely audit and load data and report on data quality. dn:Director’s dashboard will not only save us time and money, but also change the way we work by giving important information to senior management. It will enable us to spot any problems before data is used in strategic analysis and in decision making and reveal when things are not being done appropriately. We have critical data in the NHS. It must be accurate and it must have an audit trail. dn:Director will help us achieve both of these objectives.”

For more information please visit http://www.datanomic.com

ts.com’s self-service ticketing solution ts Express was awarded The Event Services Association’s New Product of 2008 award. Chosen from a range of innovations, ts Express lets an event organiser sell tickets for their event over the web, with the buyer printing out their own uniquely bar-coded ticket quickly, simply and effectively.

An event organiser using ts Express is able to reach a wider audience on the web than just ticketing through traditional outlets. Each event organiser remains in full control of their event, being able to create their own ticket selling page within the ts Express service, with their own pictures and descriptions. A range of different tickets at varying prices can be offered by the organisers for each of their events and customers simply buy online and print off their ticket at home then bring it along to get into the event.

ts Express – launched by ticketing expert ts.com in 2007 – is already being used by thousands of event organisers including TESA members for commercial events. ts Express is used for festivals, attractions, gigs, shows, performances, parties and tours, helping event organisers meet the demand for the greater convenience of online ticket purchase.

ts Express is a web based ticket selling tool. An event organiser creates their own account with the service and then sets up their own events and tickets. Through a smooth integration with PayPal, the organiser can add the details of their own PayPal business account and then immediately start to take payments by credit card, debit card and, of course, by PayPal.

And the difference? Well, the ticket buyer prints out their own tickets at home, each with a unique bar code on, and the organiser either checks these off on a list at the door or scans the tickets in real time. And the events are listed at www.ts.com and distributed automatically across listings sites on the internet giving the organiser extra exposure.

ts Express is advertising supported, so there are no service charges or fees for the use of the service. ts.com earns its revenue from the advertising on the web pages and the tickets. The service does support booking fees, but these fees, if charged, go to the event organiser. In addition, all of the customer details are kept by the organiser.

ts Express is an entry level self-service ticketing solution. To access more sophisticated functionality like running promotions, selling to members and driving integrated marketing campaigns, an organiser needs to upgrade. But for many in the event industry, ts Express is just the ticket. It provides a solid ticketing platform, with an easy upgrade path to higher featured products, that lets an organiser get selling online really quickly.

For more information about the award-winning self-service online ticketing service, please visit www.ts.com/express.