Day: December 6, 2022

Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy Kyriacos Kokkinos discussed digital skills development and the need for experts in cybersecurity during his participation in the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council of the European Union which took place in Brussels on Tuesday.

During the discussion on digital skills, Kokkinos referred to the need to create a strong ecosystem by focusing on policies for upgrading of skills, citing as possible examples the development of funding programmes focusing on digital skills, the modernisation of education, as well as deepening cooperation with industry.

Kokkinos stressed that cybersecurity should be a priority as there is currently a shortage of 200,000 specialists in Europe. He also briefed his counterparts about the adoption of the National Action Plan for Digital Skills which Cyprus adopted in 2021.

During a working lunch, the 27 ministers exchanged views on the European Union’s open strategic autonomy and digital supply chains.

Kokkinos noted that strategic autonomy should be a key objective of the EU and highlighted in particular the need to reduce strategic dependencies and increase resilience, while maintaining openness and global cooperation with partners sharing the same principles and values.

In this context, he referred to Cyprus’s support for the European initiative regarding the Global Gateway Strategy, which aims at enhancing the security of global infrastructure and supply chains in third countries.

The Council also adopted negotiating positions (general approaches) on two pieces of legislation: the Regulation on the establishment of harmonised rules for Artificial Intelligence and the European Digital Identity (eID) which creates requirements for common technical standards for the issuance of digital identity cards by member states.

The Deputy Minister said that Cyprus supports the two proposals and pointed to the National AI Strategy and the implementation of a National eID and Digital Wallet Plan in the country.

The session was also attended via teleconference by the Deputy Minister of European Affairs of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Valeriya Ionan.

Source: Cyprus News Agency

Medidata Launches New myMedidata Native App to Expedite Study Start Up and Improve Patient Experience

Designed with customer and patient feedback to expand options for eCOA and other Decentralized Clinical Trial (DCT) activities

Powered by the new Medidata Designer build tool, the myMedidata app is capable of significantly cutting study start-up times

Full integration with Medidata platform including Rave EDC

Patients can use their myMedidata account interchangeably on the app, web-based portal, or bring your own or provisioned device, empowering patient choice and broadening access

The industry’s only turn-key DCT solution is backed with Medidata’s trusted team of experts and exemplary data and privacy standards

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Medidata, a Dassault Systèmes company, launched a new patient-centric native myMedidata app, designed to provide trial participants with another option for a seamless platform experience and a single login for all their remote trial activities. The app will feature all of the myMedidata patient-centric solutions, with an initial focus on eCOA (electronic clinical outcome assessments). The myMedidata app is available on iOS and Android and can be used both on the patients’ own devices (BYOD) or via a provisioned device.

“Our latest addition to myMedidata brings an innovative app to patients designed in concert with our patient insights team, customer feedback, and the experiences derived from running the world’s biggest DCTs over the last twenty years,” said Matt Noble, senior vice president, Medidata Patient Cloud. “Medidata is leveraging its unique insights from sponsors, CROs, sites, and patients to make a meaningful difference in the clinical trial experience.”

Unique to the industry, the myMedidata app is unified with the Medidata Platform, including Rave EDC (electronic data capture), resulting in an entirely self-sustaining ecosystem where patient input, site based activities, and behind the scenes data management seamlessly operate together.

The app is configured using Medidata Designer, a new platform configuration tool, bringing a patient-centered mobile-first workflow builder to the myMedidata app. With Designer, sponsors and CRO partners can build a rich patient experience via intuitive drag and drop screen templates and visual workflow tools, which simultaneously in the background set up a clinical database without the need for any custom code. Designer drastically lowers study build times by employing Medidata and client libraries, including pre-built eCOA instruments, translations, and study configurations.

Medidata is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, which with its 3DEXPERIENCE platform is positioned to lead the digital transformation of life sciences in the age of personalized medicine with the first end-to-end scientific and business platform, from research to commercialization.

About Medidata

Medidata is leading the digital transformation of life sciences, creating hope for millions of patients. Medidata helps generate the evidence and insights to help pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and diagnostics companies, and academic researchers accelerate value, 2,000+ customers and partners access the world’s most trusted platform for clinical development, commercial, and real-world data. Medidata, a Dassault Systèmes company (Euronext Paris: FR0014003TT8, DSY.PA), is headquartered in New York City and has offices around the world to meet the needs of its customers. Discover more at www.medidata.com and follow us @Medidata.

About Dassault Systèmes

Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, is a catalyst for human progress. We provide business and people with collaborative 3D virtual environments to imagine sustainable innovations. By creating virtual twin experiences of the real world with our 3DEXPERIENCE platform and applications, our customers push the boundaries of innovation, learning and production to achieve a more sustainable world for patients, citizens, and consumers. Dassault Systèmes brings value to more than 300,000 customers of all sizes, in all industries, in more than 140 countries. For more information, visit www.3ds.com

3DEXPERIENCE, the Compass icon, the 3DS logo, CATIA, BIOVIA, GEOVIA, SOLIDWORKS, 3DVIA, ENOVIA, NETVIBES, MEDIDATA, CENTRIC PLM, 3DEXCITE, SIMULIA, DELMIA, and IFWE are commercial trademarks or registered trademarks of Dassault Systèmes, a French “société européenne” (Versailles Commercial Register # B 322 306 440), or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221206005126/en/

This material is not a CNA editorial material and CNA shall not bear responsibility for the accuracy of its content. In case you have any questions about the content, kindly refer to the contact person mentioned in the text of the press release.

Source: Cyprus News Agency

Minister of Energy, Trade and Industry, Natasa Pilides will preside on Wednesday in Cairo over the 8th Ministerial Meeting of the regional intergovernmental organization East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), the last one that will be held within the framework of the Cyprus Presidency of the Forum for 2022.

According to a press release by the Ministry, the agenda of the meeting includes the assumption of the Presidency of the EMGF for 2023 by the Minister of Petroleum of Egypt Tarek El Molla, as well as the approval of the Forum’s budget for the same year.

In addition, they are expected to adopt the proposal of the Cypriot Presidency of the EMGF to create a permanent Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the Forum which will support its work through recommendations on technologies and policies to minimize the carbon footprint of its members’ natural gas activities. The Committee will work to promote measures in the energy sector to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change.

The Ministers of the EMGF member countries are expected to approve the results of the study on the role of and opportunities for East Mediterranean Gas in the rapidly evolving global and European gas markets, as well as the report of the Forum on Decarbonisation.

Source: Cyprus News Agency

ClickHouse Launches Cloud Offering For World’s Fastest OLAP Database Management System

ClickHouse, used by Cloudflare, Adevinta, Uber, and thousands of other companies, available today as a cloud offering – ClickHouse Cloud

Series B Extension financing with Thrive Capital Investment

– ClickHouse Cloud achieves SOC 2 Type II compliance as it reaches general availability

– ClickHouse acquires Arctype IP and team, enabling the launch of the new SQL console

– Over 100 paying customers adopt ClickHouse Cloud during the two-month beta phase

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Today, ClickHouse, Inc, creators of the online analytical processing (OLAP) database management system, announced the general availability of their newest offering, ClickHouse Cloud, a lightning-fast cloud-based database that simplifies and accelerates insights and analytics for modern digital enterprises. With no infrastructure to manage, ClickHouse Cloud architecture decouples storage and compute and scales automatically to accommodate modern workloads, so users do not have to size and tune their clusters to achieve blazing-fast query speeds. This launch includes a host of new product features, enhancing the security, reliability and usability of ClickHouse Cloud.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221206005590/en/

ClickHouse Cloud SQL console (Graphic: Business Wire)

ClickHouse technology allows a company to turn their data into insights and innovation in near real-time, whether it’s a bank trying to detect fraud or a streaming service tracking the next blockbuster. With every modern business relying on massive volumes of data, the ability to derive insights in milliseconds from petabytes of data becomes critically important. The launch of ClickHouse Cloud, available at both www.clickhouse.com and through the AWS Marketplace, allows any company to access this technology on demand for the first time.

ClickHouse Cloud is production-ready with a host of new features, including SOC 2 Type II compliance and uptime SLAs for production workloads, with a public trust center and status page that provide reassurance to customers building mission-critical data-based apps on the service. Following the successful acquisition of database client Arctype, users will benefit from a new SQL console that will enable them to connect, explore, and query their databases easily.

“The advantage of ClickHouse is speed and simplicity, and ClickHouse Cloud takes that to a new level, enabling businesses to start a service and analyze data a fraction of the cost of other solutions on the market,” said Aaron Katz, CEO of ClickHouse. “In just a few months, the ClickHouse Cloud beta has gained over 100 customers and thousands of new users spanning across developers, data analysts, marketing and other critical areas of business where data is analyzed and stored.”

“ClickHouse Cloud aligns with our desire to empower our developers to go from concept to delivery on real-time analytics use cases in days, speeding up the product innovation cycle drastically. We are thrilled to collaborate with ClickHouse Cloud when it comes to performance, scalability, and security,” says Eyal Manor, Chief Product Officer of Twilio.

Over 100 paying customers have already adopted ClickHouse Cloud during the two-month beta phase, and are experiencing the ability to focus on developing business-critical data applications without the burden of operations resources.

In addition, the serverless, production-ready ClickHouse Cloud offering adds a tier optimized for development use cases. This is tuned for smaller workloads and recognizes the importance of lower-cost services enabling rapid prototyping of new features and data products. A user can now architect, model, and experiment with ClickHouse Cloud in preparation for a full production deployment.

Alongside these fundamental product announcements, ClickHouse is delighted to further validate its market opportunity, team, and business model following fresh investment from leading technology investor Thrive Capital, as an extension to its Series B. This funding will support further investment in technology and allow ClickHouse to continue building its world-leading team of software engineers.

“ClickHouse offers the most efficient database for fast and large-scale analytics,” said Avery KIemmer, an investor at Thrive Capital. “We have long admired this team and are excited to partner with them as they launch ClickHouse Cloud to an even wider audience.”

About ClickHouse

ClickHouse is the world’s fastest and most resource-efficient online analytical column-oriented database management system. Now offered as a secure and scalable serverless offering in the cloud, ClickHouse Cloud allows anyone to effortlessly take advantage of efficient real-time analytical processing. Learn more at clickhouse.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221206005590/en/

This material is not a CNA editorial material and CNA shall not bear responsibility for the accuracy of its content. In case you have any questions about the content, kindly refer to the contact person mentioned in the text of the press release.

Source: Cyprus News Agency

The intensification of the Nicosia FIR and the Republic of Cyprus national airspace violations by Turkish military aircrafts and drones and the fact that in June 2022 Turkey illegally designated the airport of Tymbou as an internal airport, highlights Turkey’s aggressive and illegal behaviour towards the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member state, Minister of Transport, Communications and Works Yiannis Karousos said on Tuesday afternoon at a working lunch of the Mediterranean Flight Safety Foundation (FSF-MED) in Nicosia.

At the same time, Karousos assured that Cyprus’ air connectivity is a top priority and stressed that with the liberalisation of the ground handling services market at airports and the implementation of new incentives worth €165 million for the period 2023 – 2027, passenger traffic is expected to increase by 52% by 2027 (from 9.1 million to 13.7 million).

Specifically, in his speech, which was delivered by the Deputy Director General of the Ministry, Yiannis Nicolaides, Karousos said that since 1974 until today, Turkey is in violation of all International Agreements and its obligations arising from them, to which the Republic of Cyprus is also a Contracting Party (for example Air Transit Agreement), prohibiting flights over Turkish territory by air carriers licensed in the Republic of Cyprus, resulting in the forced rerouting of much longer flight distances, in particular for northern destinations and therefore resulting in higher operating costs for Cyprus air carriers compared to their competitors.

Moreover, in a speech, former Secretary General of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Raymond Benjamin stressed that international and European institutions, as well as the states concerned, should make renewed efforts to find a solution to the fact that “there is no communication between the Ankara and Nicosia Control Centres” due to the fact that Turkey does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus.

He also said that there is interference to the overflights using the Nicosia FIR by the non-recognised Control Centre that exists in the occupied areas of Cyprus, adding that “these anomalies inevitably create serious risks for the 400,000 flights using the Nicosia FIR”.

Finally, FSF MED Executive Director Christos Petrou said regarding the potential regional role that Cyprus can play, that the Foundation has made several proposals to the Government, and expressed the need to raise, globally, in all international forums, the actions of Turkey in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone, the buffer zone, Famagusta, and the violation of Cyprus’ national airspace.

Source: Cyprus News Agency

Dealing with the consequences of the Russian war against Ukraine, the migration issue but also the accession course of Western Balkan countries were among the issues discussed at the EU-Western Balkans Summit, which took place in Tirana, with the participation of Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades.

In statements to the press, Government Spokesperson Marios Pelekanos said that it was the first time the summit took place in a country of this region, a presidency press release says.

Leaders, he noted, “had the opportunity during discussions to stress once more the importance of the strategic partnership between the EU and the Western Balkans.” A relationship which becomes even more important following the Russian invasion in Ukraine, he said.

Pelekanos said that leaders who took part in the conference had the opportunity “to discuss ways of dealing with the consequences of the Russian war against Ukraine, which endanger and increase challenges of all the countries of the continent, including the Western Balkans partners.”

They also exchanged views on the EU’s “commitment to implement policies which contribute in enhancing the resilience of Western Balkan countries, so that they can be in a position to deal with the challenges of our times, such as the migration issue, combating terrorism and organised crime, resolving regional conflicts and the resilience of Western Balkan countries against foreign interventions.”

According the Government Spokesperson, Western Balkans partners are called on to handle the migration issue “in such a way, so that the phenomenon of secondary migratory flows from the Western Balkans towards other EU countries can be dealt with effectively.”

EU leaders, Pelekanos noted, “also reiterated their intention to increase efforts to make the most of the Western Balkans countries accession prospects, on the basis of equity and provided that these countries will work towards and fast-track reforms which are foreseen on the basis of accession procedures, to the benefit of their economies and citizens.”

He recalled that the European Council is expected to decide on December 15 whether Bosnia Herzegovina will become a candidate for accession, adding that this is something Cyprus has expressed its agreement on.

On the sidelines of the summit, President Anastasiades had separate bilateral contacts with the Presidents of Serbia and Montenegro, the head of the Presidential Council of Bosnia Herzegovina and the Albanian Prime Minister, the presidency press release notes.

Source: Cyprus News Agency