The 10 winners of the Computerworld Honors Program from around the world were announced at last night"s awards gala in Washington. The winners were chosen from among 48 finalists from 10 countries representing the most innovative and visionary applications of IT as chosen by a panel of distinguished judges based on benefit to society, importance of IT, originality, success and difficulty. This year"s full collection of finalists and laureates includes technology applications from 15 countries. Case studies will be posted online at www.cwheroes.org, where the entire collection is available to scholars, researchers and the general public worldwide.

Here"s a list of the winners:

Government and Nonprofit Organizations

Aidmatrix: This not-for-profit organization offers software that allows nonprofit humanitarian aid organizations to distribute food, clothing, building, medical and educational supplies to the world"s needy through efficient inventory management and distribution techniques previously used almost exclusively by for-profit companies.

Medicine

Northern Lights Health Region: A health provider serving a patient base of 70,000 people, Northern Lights Health Region uses an IP communications infrastructure for videoconferencing, data, voice and wireless services that enables it to deliver better diagnostics and patient treatment and roll out new services while controlling costs.

Education and Academia

Australian Department of Defence: Australia"s Defence Online Campus enhances defense operational capability through the development of a highly flexible learning infrastructure. A common architecture and uniform basic standards enhance the administration of learning and the design, development, presentation, use, reuse and sharing of learning materials.

Media, Arts and Entertainment

Turner Broadcasting System Inc.: TBS"s digital media optimization project addresses one of the central issues facing broadcasters and cable networks in this decade: the end of the mass market. The project"s goal is to seek out viewers on their platform of choice and make a rich selection of programming available in their preferred environments.

Business and Related Services

Acxiom Corp.: A customer information infrastructure based on a grid-computing infrastructure and a grid-enabled processing architecture addresses the increasing information management and time-to-market needs of the company and its clients. The infrastructure scales its operations to keep up with demand and manages an existing reference base of 20 billion records and two petabytes of company and client data.

Manufacturing

Cambium-Forstbetriebe: This German forestry company uses a log tracking system that puts radio frequency identification tags and database software to work for foresters, ensuring documentation of all labor and transportation processes -- from the forest to the sawmills.

Environment, Energy and Agriculture

Broward County Environment Protection Department: Broward County in Florida replaced a paper-based inspection process with an e-inspection process. Field inspections are now automatically scheduled and completed using electronic media at mobile and home-based offices, and the inspection database is electronically populated in near real-time and made available to all department staff.

Science

European Southern Observatory: The ESO"s new end-to-end data flow system, which is designed to improve the transmission and management of astronomical observations and data over transcontinental distances, has improved operations of ground-based astronomical observatories.

Finance, Insurance and Real Estate

Sprint Communications Co.: Sprint"s nationwide, all-digital wireless network and middleware extends insurance claims applications to mobile devices, enabling insurers to process claims faster and provide reimbursements more quickly, in particular to victims of natural disasters.

Transportation

OnStar Corp.: OnStar"s Advanced Automatic Crash Notification system automatically notifies specially-trained emergency call center advisers of moderate to severe vehicle crashes. Sensors relay crash severity information and metrics that are communicated to 911 dispatchers to assist in determining the appropriate responses.