The Era of Architecture
In the 1980s when organizations operated predominantly via paper, the introduction of software technology was a transformative experience. The jump from manual to electronic activities brought with it substantial improvements in the way organizations conducted business. But the era of application-driven transformation for your business is over. Read more in this first of a three-part series.

CDISC ‘New Direction’ Integration Profile Demonstration
HIMSS07 is shaping up to be the premier healthcare management conference of 2007. During the conference, an Interoperability Showcase on the exhibit floor will provide organizations with an opportunity to demonstrate how they’re gearing up to meet President Bush’s challenge of developing accessible, interoperable electronic health records for most Americans by 2014. SAS is pleased to be involved in this showcase and will participate with Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) in a demo of the RFD profile. Read more.

Solvay Pharmaceuticals Enhances Worldwide Drug Development with SAS®
Solvay Pharmaceuticals needed global, secure access to clinical information – it needed to remove geographic boundaries and make information available to anyone who needs it, at any time. Its obstacles to sharing data across the globe included accessibility, compliance and collaboration. SAS Drug Development helped overcome all three, providing data warehousing, analysis, reporting and exploration. Read the full article from Bio IT World.

National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care
December 10-13
Orlando
To be held at the Orlando World Center Marriott and sponsored by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), this event is the premier meeting for people committed to the mission of improving the quality and value of healthcare. A renowned customer, Yale New Haven Health System, will be presenting their performance management journey, and will highlight SAS as their BI platform. We hope to see you there!

Healthcare and Life Sciences Executive Conference
May 16-17, 2007
Cary, NC
We’re in the planning stages of this annual event, but we have some exciting news to share: Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and healthcare policy expert, has signed on as keynote speaker! You don’t want to miss this event, so save the date now. Look for more details in our next newsletter.

SAS® Learning Edition 4.1 Now Available
This innovative and comprehensive personal learning version of SAS is provided on two CD-ROMs, giving you the freedom to learn at your own pace from your PC. This latest and expanded version includes Base SAS® 9.1.3, SAS/STAT®, SAS/GRAPH®, SAS/QC®, SAS/ETS® and SAS Enterprise Guide® 4.1, and it is bundled with The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.1. This is a great way to teach yourself SAS! Read more. 

In the Know…SAS Tips and Techniques from Around the Globe, Second Edition
Updated and expanded to cover the breadth of functionality offered in SAS 8 and SAS®9, this dynamic collection is packed with timeless classics and plenty of new material addressing such popular topics as the DATA step, SQL, macros, functions, ODS and much more. Each tip is presented in a self-contained format, and every chapter contains a collection of related tips with frequent use of code and log examples to help improve productivity. Read more.

Can IT Save Our Hospitals?
European hospitals are working with political and administrative authorities to find ways to contain costs in the face of increasing economic and financial difficulties. “Saving hospital costs to invest in doctors and nurses seems to be a logical consequence for hospital directors,” says Willi Janiesch, Head of the Pharma and Health Division at SAS International. “German hospitals could save up to $512 million annually if they were more open to the use of strategic, analytical information technology for controlling and steering.” Read more.

Providers Getting Smart About Business Intelligence
Provider organizations are increasingly drawn to the idea of using business intelligence, a term that describes a range of applications, data warehouses and other technology that facilitates the integration and analysis of data from a variety of sources. In a hospital, for example, such a system pulls data from departmental applications into a single database so that users can dig into the data using software that helps them analyze the information. Read more

SAS® Performance Management for Healthcare Improves Alignment, Patient Care, National Recognition at Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Healthways Relies on SAS® for Flexibility, Strength in Predictive Modeling
As the nation’s leader of health and care support for well and chronically ill populations, Nashville-based Healthways knows that a key to successful disease management is the correct identification of members in greatest need of care. Using SAS Enterprise Miner, Healthways builds predictive models that pull on hundreds of data points from millions of health plan members at once. Read more.

Highmark Maximizes Medicare Revenues
with SAS®
With the ever-increasing cost of healthcare in the United States, providers and insurers can’t afford to under-report potential risks associated with their Medicare/Medicaid patients. Otherwise, they risk losing money when they provide necessary services that might not be related to the initial diagnoses reported to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s why Highmark relies on SAS Enterprise Miner to build decision trees that map all of the possible outcomes a patient faces based on measures such as symptoms, health history and demographics. 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.