INC Research® latest organization to partner with SAS in life science industry

Multiple partnerships formed over past year using SAS® Drug Development, SAS® Enterprise Intelligence Platform

PHILADELPHIA  (June 19, 2006)  –  INC Research® has selected SAS® Drug Development and the SAS® Enterprise Intelligence Platform for its clinical data analysis and integration, becoming the latest of numerous scientific and IT organizations that have combined SAS technology with their own products and services to solve life science industry problems. 

The sale to INC Research – a leading contract research organization (CRO) – brings to more than 25 the number of life sciences organizations using SAS Drug Development, which provides a centralized, integrated system for managing, analyzing, reporting and reviewing clinical research information. 

“Even as compliance pressures continue to mount and profits continue to tighten, life science companies remain eager for a system capable of the longitudinal analysis of clinical trial data,” said Chris Connor, Senior Research Analyst at IDC Health Industry Insights. “A data integration and analysis solution that can, in a cost-effective manner, simultaneously integrate clinical, operational and financial data is critical to the ability to conduct adaptive trials and enables life science companies to compete in a market growing ever more uncertain. The capabilities of SAS Drug Development, when combined with the flexibility of deploying at the customer premises or as a hosted solution, offer a compelling solution for life science companies.” 

One such company, INC Research manages its clients’ clinical research data with its data division, DataSpectrum. Data from INC Research’s Oracle Clinical implementation is pulled into SAS Drug Development for analysis and subsequent integration with other clinical trial databases. 

“Our clients have a lot of data in a lot of different formats and when they go for submission, they can end up going through a crunch to get that content into the same format. Now we are able to do that work as we move through the project rather than waiting until the end and trying to bring it all together. This way is much smarter and more streamlined,” said Alistair Macdonald, Vice President of INC DataSpectrum in the Americas. “SAS Drug Development gives us new capabilities to roll out with our clients, giving them a secure data environment and the ability to rapidly analyze the data and make good, informed decisions.” 

INC Research licenses SAS Drug Development through a hosted model, allowing its staff to focus on managing clinical trials while SAS provides installation and implementation support through its data center. “The hosting part of the relationship – putting the power of SAS to work for our customers without them having to take on the challenge of setting up infrastructure – is fantastic,” said Macdonald. “The skill set of INC Research combined with the validated infrastructure provided by SAS allows us to support customers in both rescue situations and long-term planned storage. INC Research is the only CRO with the ability to offer customers this type of service within a validated infrastructure.” 

Other vendors in the life science industry have seen the value of the SAS platform, expanding SAS’ traditional use in clinical research to areas such as drug safety and sales/marketing. Examples include:

• Cognizant Technology Solutions, a global leader in IT services and a member of the SAS Alliance, is helping clients with their safety and signal detection challenges based on a framework called Application for Signal Processing & Intuitive Reporting (ASPIRE). “There are complexities to drug behaviors in broader populations that require a more comprehensive approach to analytics,” said Nagaraja Srivatsan, Head of Life Sciences North America for Cognizant. “It was a natural conclusion to deploy ASPIRE on the SAS platform, and we see an increasing demand for it from customers. They want a unified, comprehensive software platform for making analytical decisions.”
• IMS Health, the world’s leading provider of market intelligence to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, chose SAS Enterprise BI Serverto power its Precision Sales Force^TM offerings when the company’s p harmaceutical clients needed to optimize their salesforce resources. The client results are impressive. “People trust SAS for its world-class analytical capability, and they trust IMS as having the most comprehensive information, as well as the best consulting assets, both locally and globally. It’s a very powerful combination,” said Hossam Sadek, IMS Vice President for Sales Force Effectiveness in the Americas. “Customers can pick other companies with good analytical skills or good consulting skills, but they don’t have that complete continuum of information, analytics and consulting, and they’re not able to do it on a global basis.”

• Relsys International is the leading provider of software solutions for adverse event reporting, pharmacovigilance and risk management for the pharmaceutical industry. Rising interest in drug safety is prompting many companies to explore more advanced analytical techniques for interpreting the data in drug safety systems. “It is important that software leaders in life sciences work together to improve visibility into the behavior of pharmaceutical products,” said Dave Bajaj, CEO of Relsys International. “Customers have committed to a comprehensive safety solution in our Argus suite, and they have communicated clearly that they want to see synergies with SAS leadership in clinical data mining and analytics.” 

“The growing use of SAS illustrates the increasing recognition by industry organizations of SAS’ platform for life sciences as a key asset,” said Jason Burke, Director of U.S. Life Sciences Strategy and Solutions. “This gives SAS customers many options to derive greater insights into their research and business performance in cost effective ways, and confidence that their investment in SAS’ intelligence platform is broadly supported within the industry.” 

Today’s announcement was made at the 42^nd Annual Meeting of the Drug Information Association, where SAS solutions for the life sciences as well as its continued support for industry data standards will be featured in various presentations. For more information on SAS Drug Development and SAS’ proven solutions for the life sciences industry, please visit: http://www.sas.com/industry/pharma/develop.

About INC Research

INC Research is a leading contract research organization with specialized therapeutic focus.  For over two decades, the company has been dedicated to managing all aspects of global clinical development programs for pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers and tailors its full range of services, processes and technology to the unique needs of each client and their specific project requirements. Through its INC DataSpectrum division, INC Research provides a full range of data management, statistical analysis and medical writing services to support global drug development requirements for any therapeutic area. INC Research has offices in North America and Western, Eastern and Central Europe.

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