SAS brings hosted drug development analytics solution to small and midsize businesses

Given current economic conditions and the significant financial risk in bringing new therapies to market, life sciences organisations of all sizes are partnering in their research endeavours. As these partnerships produce information sharing and regulatory compliance needs, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) face significant cost and logistical challenges in leveraging enterprise-class collaborative and analytical solutions to drive their development activities. To address these challenges, SAS, the leader in business intelligence, has introduced a new hosted solution for the Life Sciences industry to bring the value of the enterprise SAS Drug Development to SMBs.

SAS® Solutions OnDemand: Drug Development is a hosted solution for aggregating, analysing and reviewing clinical trials data in order to determine safety and efficacy outcomes. It includes a compliance-enabling platform for efficiently developing, executing and managing the collection, sharing, transformation, analysis and submission of clinical research data.

“By offering rapid implementation of a proven solution SAS is delivering game changing capabilities for small-to-midsize Life Sciences companies,” says Alan Louie, PhD, Research Director Health Industry Insights, an IDC company. “Now these companies can focus their limited resources on delivering innovative new medicines to patients around the globe.”

Cost-effective alternative

Requiring only a Web browser for access, SAS Solutions OnDemand: Drug Development is a cost-effective alternative to an enterprise SAS Drug Development implementation, with all embedded enterprise-level content management and analytical capabilities. The solution can be migrated to enterprise SAS Drug Development as customers' needs evolve.

SAS hosting allows rapid and reliable validation and implementation, eliminating strain on SMB's limited IT infrastructure and resources.
“SAS' new hosted solution gives SMBs access to our world-class analytics without the costs of an enterprise solution,” said Jason Burke, worldwide director of health and life sciences at SAS. “We're also implementing streamlined deployment and targeted training to reduce the solution price as well as facilitate successful solution utilisation.”

SAS Solutions OnDemand: Drug Development involves no direct hardware or software installation, system administration, validation or maintenance costs related to SAS processing of clinical trials data. SAS also provides written guarantees of solution and system availability.

Secure

Secure access is provided for both internal and external user communities, including contract research organisations, collaborative development partners and monitoring committees.

Ernst & Young LLP performed SAS 70 Type II and SysTrust examinations of SAS Solutions OnDemand systems and granted an “unqualified opinion” and “assurance report” on SAS performance. SAS 70 and SysTrust certification demonstrates that SAS has in place the processes and controls to preserve the integrity and confidentiality of its hosted solutions.

To contact at SAS:
Michelle Chettoa
Marketing Manager
SAS Institute South Africa
+ 27 11 713-3400