More than half of the items on the Scientist's list of top innovations of the past year are genomics-related.
The top spot went to Edico Genomics' Dragen Bio-IT processor. This device aims to speed up the time it takes to analyze a genome and scale down the hardware needed to the size of chip that can be installed into a desktop-sized server. According to Edico, a genome that would typically take 24 hours to analyze would take 18 minutes with Dragen.
"This looks to be a promising solution for processing data efficiently and quickly," Tara Rock, the manager of New York University's genomics core facility, tells the Scientist.
Just behind Edico Genomics are two Illumina products — MiSeqDx and HiSeq X Ten — followed by BioNano Genomics' IrysChip V2.
To develop its list of top life science products from 2014, the Scientist turned to a panel of five judges — Rock, Thomson Reuters' Miriam Bayes, Eric Schadt from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Domain Associates' Kim Kamdar, and David Ecker, the cofounder of Isis Pharmaceuticals and founder of Ibis Biosciences.