The Era of Architecture
Innovation often occurs at the boundaries between existing processes, organizations, information systems and people. Architecture describes technology boundaries and thus provides a crucial blueprint for how to enable business and scientific innovation through software. Check out part two in this three-part series. Click here to read part one.

CDISC's Profile Demonstration Highlights SAS Leadership
CDISC and its partners demonstrated the Request Form for Data Capture (RFD) profile at the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase during its recent annual meeting in New Orleans. The demonstration featured four scenarios: clinical trial execution, drug safety, disease registries and bio-surveillance. SAS took part as an Implementer level sponsor, allowing the company to show its leadership in the integration of clinical research data capture with electronic health record systems. Learn more about the event.

SAS® Drug Development White Paper Provides Scientific Discovery Insights
SAS Drug Development helps life sciences organizations deliver better products to market faster by effectively assessing the safety and efficacy of research compounds and by facilitating collaboration across trials, phases and therapeutic areas. Check out our new white paper to discover how this offering can give your organization an edge over the competition.

DIA 43rd Annual Meeting
June 17-21
Atlanta
SAS will have a major presence to highlight SAS Drug Development's ability to drive innovation through intelligence, and SAS Data Integration, the foundation for consistent, trusted data throughout the enterprise. Click here for more information.

Healthcare and Life Sciences Executive Conference
May 16-17
Cary, NC
Using the modern tools that are all around us, we can build a 21st-century intelligent health system that saves lives and saves money for all Americans, says Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the US House of Representatives and founder of the Center for Health Transformation. Gingrich will join representatives from companies across the life sciences, payer and provider industries as well as Dr. Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS, and Jim Davis, SAS' Chief Marketing Officer, during the SAS Healthcare and Life Sciences Executive Conference on May 16-17 in Cary, NC. For registration or more information about the conference, click here.

DMAA/SOA Predictive Modeling and Risk Adjustment Seminar
April 19-20
Dr. Carter Coberley, Vice President for the Center of Health Research at Healthways, and Rick Ingraham, SAS Global Healthcare Strategist, will present “Disease Management: An Overview of What's New” at the joint Disease Management Association of America and Society of Actuaries seminar on predictive modeling and risk adjustment. The presentation, which will provide an overview of disease-management applications of advanced predictive modeling in the healthcare industry, will take place at 8 a.m. Friday, April 20, during the fourth annual seminar in Orlando. View a Webcast of Dr. Coberley and Ingraham discussing many of the same points that will be covered during the seminar.

SAS Global Forum
April 16-19 in Orlando!
The event, formerly known as SAS Users Group International (SUGI), gives you the unique opportunity to network with other SAS users and SAS staff from around the world. For more information, including registration, click here.

16th Annual Partnerships with CROs Conference April 10-12
Orlando
SAS will exhibit at this show, which is the longest running and most respected clinical development outsourcing conference. SAS Drug Development and SAS Data Integration will be featured in the booth.

Data Drives Performance Improvements at Hospitals
Even with the best of intentions, hospital executives and clinicians often make decisions that are far from evidence-based or data-driven. They want to improve quality of care, efficiency and financial performance, yet they cannot always get to the data that could inform their decisions, much less predict and optimize performance. Read more.

Take the Health Insurance Challenge!
Which health plans will rise up to meet customer demands and, as a result, stand out as innovators in 2007? The answer: those that know how to apply an advanced analytic platform across many data stores, thus empowering all organizational units to perform their own data exploration, prediction and reporting. Read more.

Join SAS, Your Colleagues for the World Health Care Congress in Washington, DC
Rick Ingraham, SAS Global Healthcare Strategist, will discuss the challenges of leveraging the work of RHIOs and SHIEs into improved outcomes and delivery at 10 a.m. Monday, April 23. SAS has been actively engaged in assisting health plans to not only meet the “first-generation RHIO,” but also to be positioned to achieve the initial vision for the organization. Attendees will learn about the key stages in execution for achieving higher-end prediction, forecasting and quality outcomes reporting. Dr. Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS, will speak Tuesday on “Growing and Sustaining the Innovative Enterprise.”

Want to learn more about the World Health Care Congress? Click here for registration information.

Data Preparation for Analytics Using SAS®
Are you involved in data preparation for analytics? This user-friendly text offers practical advice in the form of SAS coding tips and tricks, focusing on a business point of view. Learn about predictive modeling concepts for data mart creation, data preparation for time series analysis, using various SAS procedures and SAS Enterprise Miner™ for scoring, and using powerful SAS macros to make changes among various data mart structures. Read more. 

Programming Tip: Applying Standard Formats in a Task within SAS® Enterprise Guide®
Every time you run a task that produces a report, SAS Enterprise Guide decides how the data should be displayed. That's good, but sometimes the way that SAS Enterprise Guide displays data may not be exactly what you want. You can apply a format in a Data Grid, but then the format will be saved with the data table. To avoid that, you can apply the format directly in a task. Learn more.

NCSU Offers Advanced Degree in Data Mining
Whether it's uncovering fraud in banking transactions, improving the quality of healthcare received by patients or predicting which customers will respond to a marketing campaign, the applications of data analytics cross all industries. Not surprisingly, data analytics experts are in high demand. To help meet this growing need, SAS and North Carolina State University are offering a new graduate degree program in data analytics. Read more.

Have a question, comment or suggestion? Want to see something covered in the next Health and Life Sciences Special Edition? Simply e-mail the editor.