From digital pens that seem to magically know where they are on paper case report forms (CRFs) to under-your-desk computers able to deliver near-supercomputer power, the range and caliber of products entered in the third annual Bio-IT World Best of Show contest were impressive. There were more than 30 entries in four categories. We also had an impressive group of outside judges (listed below) and three judges from the Bio-IT World staff.

The contest took place at the 2005 Bio-IT World Conference + Expo in Boston this week.

Judging entries is a two-step process. Before the show, screeners working independently score entries based on three criteria: the importance of the problem addressed by the product; technology innovation; and the adequacy of the feature set to the task. The top three scorers in each category become finalists -- a tie in clinical trials produced four finalists in that category this year. Winners are then selected at the conference, following brief demonstrations on the show floor and judge deliberations.

A novel approach to identifying and containing malicious software attacks was the winner in the IT Infrastructure category. The product -- Virus Throttling for ProCurve Switch 5300xl, from Hewlett-Packard -- is software that scrutinizes traffic through switches looking for unusual traffic patterns, for example, segments of traffic that try to immediately open paths to many other devices, a hallmark of virus behavior.

Virus Throttling alerts systems administrators, who can adjust its settings to stop or slow such traffic until they figure out what it is. The interception happens at the switch level, not on users desks. The two other IT Infrastrucure finalists were a 96-node high-performance cluster computer from Orion Multisystems and a powerful clustered storage solution from Isilon Systems.

A wide array of text- and data-mining tools characterized competition in the Informatics Tools & Data category. Insight Discoverer Extractor from TEMIS was the winner. Its powerful linguistics analysis reads 50 different formats with automatic language identification and parsing of 16 languages. TEMIS uses a set of “skill cartridges” -- one is chemical entity relationships -- to drill into specific domain areas.

The other Informatics finalists were MedScan TextMiner from Ariadne Genomics and Nervana Knowledge Discovery System from Nervana.

Judges made two awards in the Clinical Trials & Research category. InForm 4.5 from Phase Forward was the winner. InForm is a widely used electronic data capture tool for clinical trials. This latest upgrade, though, is more than an incremental change. Clinical trial management and reporting capability has been added, tackling an issue that has long been solved by ad hoc tools. Real-time metrics such as CRF completion status, query cycle times, and recruitment progress can be monitored.

A second award for imaginative technology innovation was given to Standard Register for its ExpeData Digital Writing solution 2.3. This is basically a pen with a built-in camera that records everything being written. It is paired with forms imprinted with a unique pattern so that the pen always knows exactly where on the form it is, and which form it is. Data are later downloaded from a docking station or directly via wireless technology.

The two other finalists in the Clinical Trials category were a voice recognition and data input system, IV Atrial 1.10, from IVRAS, and a software package, tcVisualize 1.0.7 from Tourtellotte Consulting, used for supply chain management simulation and planning during clinical trials -- something usually done ad hoc on Excel spreadsheets.

A fascinating and somewhat-difficult-to-describe product took the top award in Knowledge Management & Collaboration. KDE 2.0 from InforSense is middleware for building scientific workflows -- allowing scientists to develop extensive and complicated experiment workflows linking many different steps and applications in a given study. These workflows are archived, and modifications made to them are tracked, so that subsequent scientists tackling similar projects can easily use or adapt prior workflows -- or create entirely new ones.

The other finalists in Knowledge Management were LABTrack Electronic Notebook from EKM and EMC Documentum 5.3 from EMC. The latter is a very powerful enterprisewide content management solution, comprised of software and hardware, well suited for larger companies in the biopharma and pharma space.

Finalists & Winners:

IT Infrastructure

Winner - Virus Throttling for ProCurve Switch 5300xl from Hewlett-Packard

IsilonIQ Series from Isilon Systems

Cluster Workstation DS-96 from Orion Multisystems

Informatics Tools & Data

Winner - Insight Discoverer Extractor from TEMIS

MedScan TextMiner from Ariadne Genomics

Nervana Knowledge Discovery System from Nervana

Knowledge Management & Collaboration

Winner - KDE 2.0 from InforSense

LABTrack Electronic Lab Notebook from EKM

EMC Documentum 5.3 from EMC

Clinical Trials & Research

Winner - InForm Software 4.5 from Phase Forward

IV Atrial 1.1.0 from IVRAS

tcVisualize 1.0.7 from Tourtellotte Consulting

ExpeData Digital Writing Solutions 2.3 from Standard Register

Thanks to the Judges:

Bill Van Etten, partner, The BioTeam; Robert Latek, senior bioinformatics scientist, Whitehead Institute; Stephen Fogelson, director of clinical research, Clinquest; Bernard Wess, managing director, ProtonCare USA; Michael Thomas, assistant professor, Idaho State University; Enoch Huang, director of molecular informatics, Pfizer Discovery Technology Center; Michael Athanas, founder, The BioTeam; Jean-Francois Levesque, VP of Information Technology, Genizon; Michael Elliot, founder, Atrium Research; Jeff Bizzaro, chairman, Bioinformatics.org; Tony Strattner, editorial manager, IDC Go-to-Market Services; and Mike Swenson, senior analyst, Life Science Insights.