A hand held scanner that can be used to make 3D computer models, a digital hearing aid, and a family of military grade encryption systems took the top prizes this year at the European IT industry's "oscars". The three winners - a small London firm, 3D Scanners; Oticon, a large Danish corporation; and the Finnish owned Data Fellows - received their statue (and 200,000 ECU) from EC Commission president Jacques Santer at a big award ceremony in Brussels last week.
The 25 finalists, drawn from 300 submissions from 30 countries, included three Irish firms: a Web educational support tool from the small Dublin firm WEST; a home and PC banking system developed by ICL's Dublin based IT centre; and Expert Edge's AppBridge system, which puts a Windows like face on old character based software systems. WEST director Duncan Lennox said the company was delighted to be a finalist alongside major names such as IBM and Siemens.