SAS Health and Life Sciences

At the end of last week, word came down that SAS' health and life sciences team lost one of our own.  Joe Carter -- known to many as the face of SAS Drug Development -- lost his battle with cancer on Friday.  It is never easy to hear about losing someone, but Joe's absence will be particularly felt by his many friends in the industry.  And it is a stark reminder that our research with cancer needs to move more quickly.

A number of readers have raised the issue of data quality to me over the past few months, especially as it relates to getting value (or not) from advanced analytics.  So I wanted to pass along that SAS will be hosting a free webcast next week specifically about data quality. 

Got Bad Data? Part 2
Wednesday, June 17, at 1 p.m. ET USA 

It is the second in a series of live webcasts focused specifically on this problem, and will be delivered by Guarav Verma and Anne Milley, two of my colleagues here in SAS who live this area of technology.   Some of the topics they plan to cover include data quality profiling, continuous improvement, data collection with closed-loop monitoring, and of course supporting analytical applications.  For healthcare organizations, I believe they are even going to offer a free assessment to viewers following the webcast  using their data...should be interesting.

Oh, and if you didn't manage to catch Part 1, you can view the replay of it here.

I've never had so many responses to a blog post as I have from the one last week regarding my recent discussions with US political teams on health reform.  Clearly, the national attention -- from legislators all the way down to us lowly consumers -- is being directed at this ongoing evolution.  From emails to individuals stopping me in the halls to chat about it, people both within and outside the healthcare industry reached out to share their insights, perspectives and stories.  I thought I would take a moment to share with you a couple of them. 

Anyone that knows me well knows that I dislike politics. It may be the scientist in me always looking for facts to take center stage. Or it may be the pacifist side of me always wanting everyone to just get along and be happy. So it is more than a little ironic that I found myself this week knee-deep in the political waters of US healthcare reform. I survived, in no small part to Kathy Hahn, my ambassador here in SAS who knows the ins and outs of government like a great concert violinist knows her strings. What I learned this week was eye-opening.

A few weeks ago, I decided to check up on my Facebook site.  I had not been on the site for a while -- no particular reason, just had not taken the time.  Anyway, when I looked at my own activity feed -- the one that shows what I've been doing -- it was a complete disaster.  There were activity items all over the place, items with titles that made no sense...it was something to behold.  None of my friends were bold enough to say anything, but I'm sure some of them had to be wondering what in the world I was doing.  But what I thought must be a some glitch in an application I had installed actually turned out to be a much bigger problem, one that related to my entire online identity.

Today, SAS hosted a press conference by the PhRMA.  They announced the availability of a new report about medical research into diabetes treatments.  Jerry Mathers, the actor known to most Americans as "Beaver" on the 1950s television show "Leave It to Beaver", attended and served as a spokesperson.  Other speakers included Jenn Mann (SAS), Ken Johnson (PhRMA), Barry Goldstein (Merck), and William Ellis (American Pharmacists Association Foundation).

Last time, I gave an update on the SAS Health and Life Sciences Executive Conference that was recently held on our campus here in Cary.  Dr. John Halamka, one of our keynote speakers, spent some time discussing the challenges in defining "meaningful use", a term used to qualify an organization's adoption of health IT for purposes of federal funding.  The term is actually undefined in the legislation, and since it is linked to the money, there is a lot of activity now within the industry to better define what this means.  A lot of activity. 

Wow, what a great event we just had.  The 6th Annual SAS Health and Life Sciences Executive Conference wrapped up last night, and it was certainly one of the best we've had.  The event, which was sponsored by HP, focused on the theme "Welcome to a New Dawn of Healthcare: Patient-Driven.  Technology-Enabled."  I continue to be impressed at how this conference grows in both quality and participation year after year.  For those that were able to attend, thank you for your time and insights, you really make the event worthwhile.  Our planners were worried for a while -- a lagging economy, mergers, acquisitions, federal health priorities -- would people be able to take the time and expense to come?  But for an event focused on increasing industry insights and collaboration across industry silos, the message from everyone was clear -- now is the time.  Update: conference videos and materials have been posted.

My family and I frequently visit a local restaurant called Elmo’s Diner.  Elmos (no relation to Sesame Street) is exactly what you would expect in a diner – comfort food served in a relaxed environment at an affordable price.  The restaurant, which has 2 locations convenient to UNC and Duke University, is frequented by just about everyone – college deans and poor freshman sitting next to each other enjoying brunch.  My wife and I usually go on a diet once or twice a year to fight back the inevitable weight gains associated with western carbohydrate-rich eating habits, but our weekly Elmo’s trip (usually for a breakfast) is reserved for a cheat – high praise from people craving anything vaguely resembling bread.

Yesterday, I was invited to attend a Regional White House Forum on Health Reform in Greensboro, NC.  This was the fourth of five forums being held across the US (the others being Michigan, Vermont, Iowa, and California).  The forums represent the next step following the Obama administration's call last December asking Americans to host and participate in Health Care Community Discussions.  Over 9,000 people got involved and submitted 3,276 group reports, and over 30,000 participant surveys were completed.  The community discussion findings are available online, and if you are interested in what happened in these 5 regional forums, you can see transcripts, slides, and videos on http://healthreform.gov/whitehouseforums.html.  On Monday, the White House also released a report covering this topic as well; it is worth a read.

For those that might be interested, Glen de Vries at Medidata and I recorded a podcast for BioIT World magazine that is now up on BioIT World's website. The podcast focuses on how the technology landscape is changing within the pharmaceutical and broader healthcare markets.  I always enjoy talking with Glen; as I've shared before on this blog, he and I share a common view of the opportunity for innovation through the application of technology.  Please post any feedback you would like to share as well.

Four wrecked Estonia ferries, six crashed jumbo jets, or over seven hundred crashed military helicopters - the equivalent number of people die each year because of improper care in Sweden. Yet no one reacts on these "emergency facts" and wonders how this can happen in today's modern healthcare.  Medical errors leading to prolonged treatment, adverse health events and even death remain an issue around the globe.  Heléne Spjuth, Subject Matter Expert on Health Care at SAS Institute in Sweden, proposes thousands of lives yearly could be spared from deadly injury in the Swedish Healthcare system.

If you haven't been seeing it already, now is a good time to start watching what is happening in the identity management space.  This technology area is not one I have spent a lot of time in, but several things I've noticed recently lead me to think we may be approaching the tipping point on this technology.  In the face of horizontal identity management standards with multi-market appeal, it will be interesting to see whether any of the vertically-specific standards efforts will survive and thrive.  And regardless of who wins, adoption will open some doors for analytics.

28,720. That's approximately how many words (by my word processor's count) it takes to appropriate $20B for the US healthcare system.  At least, that's about how many words dedicated to healthcare appear in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (you know, the stimulus bill).  Merriam-Webster defines a “bolus” as a large dose of medicine given for the purpose of rapidly achieving the needed therapeutic concentration.  I'd say that about sums it up.

This week's guest blog post comes to use from David Handelsman, Life Sciences Business Solutions Manager at SAS.  You can read more about David here.

In just the past week, we’ve seen two fascinating examples of improbable collisions.  In orbit, two satellites unintentionally smashed into each other at high speed.  While the probability of this occurring can certainly be calculated by NASA, that probability has to be quite low considering we’re talking about a 4-dimenional collision (x,y and z-planes, along with time), at very high speeds.  If you could imagine hitting one bullet with another, and doing it blindfolded, you’d have an idea how unlikely this collision would be.