EU Supply has entered into a contract with Sogn & Fjordane County Council and participating municipalities in Norway for up to 28 local and regional authorities and other public sector bodies to use EU Supply’s CTM platform.

EU Supply said the customer represented a regional collaboration which involved a number of local and regional authorities using the CTM platform on a similar basis to that set out in the company’s contract win for another regional collaboration in Norway announced on 19 January.

It said the contract was expected to generate total revenues of up to £250k over 8 years, including licences and support, implementations and integrations.

On September 18, Telenor Norway will finally switch off the remaining analogue signals on its cable network.

The decision gives the operator the opportunity to fully digitise its network and introduce new services.

“Analogue services require both resources and capacity. We want to free up this capacity to give customers a better digital offering,” says Birgit Bjørnsen, head of TV and broadband division, Telenor Norway.

Most of Telenor’s TV customers are already using digital solutions, and the remaining customers on the analogue network will be assisted in the transition.

Epilepsy is the most common chronic neurological disease in children, affecting between 0.5 to 1 per cent of all children.

In a newly published analysis of epilepsy diagnoses in Norwegian children, however, fully one-third of children had been incorrectly diagnosed, as reported by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) and colleagues in a study recently published in the journal Pediatrics.

“It’s scary that there are so many people who seem to have received a diagnosis of epilepsy without actually having the disease,” said Henrik Peersen, General Secretary at the Norwegian Epilepsy Association, in response to the findings.

“We have long suspected that there are errors in the diagnosis of epilepsy,” he added. “But this can cause problems the other way, in as much as children may not be properly investigated to see if they have epilepsy.”

A rich database provides clues

The researchers used data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. The cohort study includes questionnaires that were regularly filled out by mothers with children born between 1999 and 2009. The questionnaires asked mothers about many different illnesses, including epilepsy.

The study population included 112,744 children from the cohort study who were aged 3 to 13 years at the end of follow-up by the registry on 31 December 2012. The researchers then compared information on these children with the questionnaires filled out by their mothers and to diagnoses that were recorded in the Norwegian Patient Registry.

After the diagnoses had been quality checked, the researchers found that one-third of the children did not meet the criteria for an epilepsy diagnosis. Only 587, or 65.6 per cent, of the 896 children who were either reported or recorded as having epilepsy actually had the disease, according to its classical definition.

“Three-hundred and nine children were recorded as having a diagnosis of epilepsy, even though they did not meet the criteria,” said Kari Modalsli Aaberg, a pediatrician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health who was head of data collection for the study and its first author.

The classic definition of epilepsy that applied during the study period is that the child must have had at least two unprovoked epileptic seizures at least 24 hours apart.

“It appears that there is a low threshold for referring children to be checked for epilepsy in Norway. The high number of unconfirmed diagnoses may be the explanation for this,” Aaberg said.

Coding errors and different types of seizures

The researchers think one reason so many children had the wrong diagnosis might be from incorrect coding in the Norwegian Patient Registry.

Most of the children who did not meet the criteria for epilepsy had experienced other kinds of seizures, such as those caused by high fevers, or related non- unspecific episodes of “being absent” or other neurological or developmental disorders.

“The study shows that epilepsy can be a difficult diagnosis to make in children,” says Aaberg.

She said, however, that it is important to have correct figures on the occurrence of epilepsy in order to plan follow-up of these children.

Unclear how some diagnoses were made

One-third of the children in the study had received a tentative diagnosis by a clinician during an investigation of suspected epilepsy. One-third had been diagnosed after an EEG examination (examination of the brain’s electrical activity).

“When a doctor makes a diagnosis of epilepsy, he or she is required to contact the specialist health service. In many of the patient journals we found a question mark next to epilepsy, which showed that the doctors thought the diagnosis was tentative. The code for epilepsy was used not only in confirmed cases of epilepsy, but also in some children diagnosed with suspicion of epilepsy,” Aaberg said.

Many of these children were found to not to have epilepsy during a subsequent investigation, so that the clinical conclusion was then that the child did not have epilepsy.

But the researchers were unable to find out where or from whom the diagnoses came for just under a third of the children.

Some children given medications for no reason

Among the 309 children who were incorrectly diagnosed with epilepsy, 57 of them had been given epilepsy medication. The parents of these children were informed of the diagnosis, but the researchers interviewed only 60 per cent of the parents. Therefore, they do not know how many parents in total thought their child had epilepsy even though the child did not.

“Those who were medicated accounted for 18 per cent of the children who were mistakenly diagnosed. These may have been children for whom the suspicion of epilepsy was strong, but that later turned out not to have epilepsy,” Aaberg said.

The study was a collaboration between the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo University Hospital, the Akershus University Hospital, University of Bergen, University of Edinburgh and Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburg.

(sciencenordic)

Rolls-Royce has secured a contract to provide a mooring system for Statoil’s oil platform Njord A, which is being upgraded by Norway-based engineering and construction service provider Kvaerner.

The platform is located in the Njord oilfield, approximately 130km northwest of the city Kristiansund and 30km west of the Draugen field.

Rolls-Royce will upgrade Njord A’s current 12-point mooring system to a new 17-point system under the new £15m deal.

Rolls-Royce customer and services marine director Knut Hovland said: “We are proud to be part of this extensive upgrade programme.

“It is the first time in the Norway’s history as an oil producing country that a platform is being towed to shore for an extensive upgrade. Previous upgrades have been done offshore.”

Njord A is a semisubmersible floating steel platform, which features an integrated deck with drilling and processing facilities, as well as living quarters.

Rolls-Royce will provide low pressure hydraulic driven winches, fairleads and a control system for the four-column production platform, which will then it will be moored at about 330m water depth following installation.

Rolls-Royce is expected to deliver the system next year, and the platform is scheduled to re-commence its operations in 2020.

The latest upgrades are expected to allow the platform to serve for additional 20 years, and form part of the wider ‘Njord Future’ initiative being carried out by Statoil, which aims to increase the lifespan of the Njord field. Kvaerner originally delivered Njord A in 1997.

The topside of the platform was developed at Stord and the hull was built at Verdal, both located on the west coast of Norway.

(offshore-technology)

Norway has begun testing of the braking parachute it will employ on its fleet of Lockheed Martin F-35As.

Initial efforts at Edwards AFB in California will focus on how the Joint Strike Fighter handles with the parachute fitted, as well as braking on both dry and wet runways. A later phase, running until early 2018 at Eielson AFB in Alaska, will evaluate its performance on icy runways.

All trials will be performed with test aircraft AF-2, the Norwegian defence ministry says.

It is sharing the development and integration costs for the system with the Netherlands, which is also acquiring the conventional take-off and landing F-35A.

Modifications include strengthening the fuselage and adapting the aircraft to house the parachute between the two tailfins.

Olso cites the extreme weather conditions its aircraft typically operate in – which include low temperatures, strong winds, poor visibility and slippery runways – as key reasons for needing the parachute.

“Being able to operate fighter aircraft under varying weather conditions is critical for our operational capability,” says defence minister Øystein Bø.

The first F-35 will arrive in Norway in November 2017, the ministry says.

(N.C2, flightglobal)