Recognising innovation, professionalism and best practice, the BCS IT Industry Awards were announced at the Grosvenor House Hotel on 4 December. With IT at the heart of modern day life and business, the awards recognised a wide range of organisations, individuals and projects.

Fivium and gm2 Logistics won the BP Environment and Green Organisation of the Year awards respectively, proving there is a strong business case for tackling the issue of carbon emissions. Both organisations were able to show significant reductions in emissions and savings to the bottom line.

David Clarke, BCS CEO explains: 'The BCS IT Industry awards are regarded as the hallmark of excellence, best practice and professionalism in the industry. The two green awards are relatively new categories and reflect one of the key issues affecting our industry today. I am delighted to see that the winners and medallists have clearly demonstrated that taking the environmental impact of business processes into consideration can provide real benefits and results in terms of an organisation's bottom line. I hope that more organisations will follow suit and address this important issue.'

The much coveted BT Flagship Award for Innovation was collected by Garlik for its DataPatrol technology. DataPatrol was developed in response to the evolving world of identity theft and is the world's first semantic technology platform that aims to give consumers power over their privacy and identity online. The project also collected the web-based technology award.

IT projects for the healthcare sector also featured among the winners including a potential life saving mobile patient care reporting system which collected the mobile technology award. The CSC Emergency Care Solution for NHS Ambulance Services, Siren ePCR, enables paramedics, using a rugged touch screen tablet, to access a summary of the patient's notes to help them determine the best course of treatment, often negating the need to take the patient to A&E.

An innovative application from Concentra called C-PORT (Chemotherapy Planning Oncology Resource Tool), was a double winner taking the awards for social contribution and business to business sponsored by IBM.

In the individual category, Claire Adams who works for Connecting for Health collected the service manager of the year award for her work to ensure that IT training is in place for all NHS clinical staff so that they are IT literate and able to use the systems currently being developed as part of the NHS Connecting for Health IT Programme.

A full list of winners and medallists can be found at: www.bcs.org/winners08