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:

"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 42nd 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.