CLARITY Challenge

The application period for the CLARITY Challenge is now closed.

Boston Children’s Hospital divided a prize of $25,000 between the winning team ($15,000) and two finalist teams ($5,000 each). Winners and finalists were selected by our panel of judges according to pre-specified criteria. The winner (Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Division of Genetics, Massachusetts General Hospital, Partners Laboratory for Molecular Medicine, Brown University, and Utrecht University) and two finalists (the University of Iowa and Genomatix/CeGaT/Institute of Pathology, University Hospital of Bonn in Germany) were publicly announced in San Francisco on November 7, 2012 at the American Society of Human Genetics Conference.

Q: Is there a limit to the number of members per team?
A: There is no limit to the number of members per team.

Q: Are any of the judges bioinformaticians?
A: Yes. See below to learn more about the Challenge’s judges.

Q: Is there a Participation Agreement?
A: Yes. Please click here for a copy.

Q: What level of detail should be provided regarding methods?
A: Enough detail so that a qualified reader could understand and reproduce what was done. Similar to the standard expected of a peer reviewed publication.

Q: Will my team’s innovative methods be kept confidential?
A: Method innovations made by your team during participation in the Challenge are the team institution’s intellectual property and will be kept confidential by Boston Children’s Hospital and the judges. Boston Children’s Hospital does retain the right to publish the outcome of the Challenge, but will give the team and the institution time to review any publication in order to protect its intellectual property. Please review Article 4 of the Participation Agreement for additional information.

A diverse group of well-respected judges from the medical and technology communities will evaluate:

• The methods by which competitors analyze and interpret the genome sequences of the pediatric patients and their parents; and
• The ability of the competitors to synthesize the genomic data and produce clinically meaningful reports with actionable results for the participants’ physicians.

Elaine Lyon, PhD
ARUP Laboratories

Joseph Majzoub, MD
Boston Children’s Hospital

Peter Neupert
Microsoft Health Solutions Group

David McCallie, Jr., MD
Cerner Medical Informatics Institute

Peter Szolovits, PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Huntington F. Willard, PhD
Duke University