A Shot in the Arm - Jason Burke on Health and Life Sciences

Anyone who knows me knows I am a huge advocate of intelligent software architectures.  Design and governance of good architecture serves as the foundation for powerful, extensible, and scalable software solutions.  Last week I wrote a story for Technorati about some of the problems with our current health reform approach, and I highlighted architecture as one of the missing puzzle pieces.  To that end, this week I share an interview Drew Foglia, one of the minds behind SAS' current thinking in services-oriented architecture for our health and life sciences solutions.

Does your organization use agile development?  For our health and life sciences solutions, we have historically relied on waterfall development: it is well understood, easily maps to regulatory requirements around traceability, and is conservative enough for commercial software companies to feel confident in the outcomes.  But waterfall places some assumptions and prerequisites on development processes that don't seem to fit anymore, so my team and I are implementing agile.  I mentioned in my education post a couple of weeks ago some team training related to agile methods.  Here's the scoop.

This week was designated Education Week by SAS' CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight.  For those that don't know, Dr. Goodnight is an outspoken supporter of education: he has endowed several college professorships; has made education the focus of SAS' philanthropy; launched the award-winning SAS® Curriculum Pathways® program of educational resources; and together with his wife co-founded an independent college preparatory day school called Cary Academy, a model school for integrating technology into all facets of education.  So where does education rate in your life?

One of the things in which I take some pride in working for SAS is our track record in building software that satisfies the needs of customers and regulators from a quality and compliance perspective.  One person who has been a long-standing driver and contributor to that success is Sue Carroll.  As part of my ongoing series of interviews with SAS staff, I talk to Sue about the role quality management plays in SAS.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've recently taken on responsibility for health and life sciences research and development here in SAS.  I have had (and continue to have) quite a bit to learn, and one of the people who has really gone above and beyond in helping me get up to speed is Tim Arthur.  As part of an ongoing series of blog posts where I interview different people across SAS about their projects, interests, and activities, I talk to Tim on what its like to try and keep complex SAS R&D projects on the right tracks.

Since I joined SAS a little more than 4 years ago, many customers have communicated to me that they wanted more insight into SAS: what we are working on, who is working on it, and what our current thinking is on technology topics.  So I've decided to create a new series of blog posts where I interview different people across SAS about their projects, interests, and activities.  In this segment, I interview Peter Villiers, one of the senior developers in the health and life sciences R&D organization, about a new solution called the SAS Clinical Standards Toolkit.

Well, I’m finally back to writing my blog again.  This break has been the longest period I’ve gone without writing a post.  Usually, I shoot for one post a week, and I’ve had a pretty good record, but circumstances and other priorities conspired against me recently, so now I’m playing a little catch up.

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. [Updated below]

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.

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.

I thought I had escaped it.  After working at Microsoft for a number of years, I'm all too familiar with the open source wars.  I figured, "Hey, I'm going to SAS, they are multi-platform, they contribute to community development, they use open source software...I finally can get some peace!"  Or not…

As opposed to finishing up the year with a top 10 list or some serious topic, let me just say thank you to everyone who has been following the blog and sending me their thoughts.  I'm looking forward to 2009 and I'm sure we will have lots more to talk about!

I'll leave you with a little parody on why analytics are so important:

I suppose you could say it was inevitable.  It seems like you can bet on two things with certainty these days: a plethora of healthcare-related online information, and a plethora of opinions.  I find it somewhat ironic that in the middle of a national election cycle where healthcare is front-and-center of the US national agendas, SAS has decided to launch a blog on health and life sciences.  The cynics might call it opportunism, the critics will likely say it’s overdue, and the remainder will probably wonder if anything unique or valuable will come from this most recent entrant into the blogosphere.

So why are we doing a blog at all?  Let me take a moment and tell you what it is not.  This is not a marketing message machine where I give you information you can get on other areas of our corporate web site.  This is not a political or religious soapbox – I’m not here to promote or denounce single-payer healthcare, pay-for-performance programs, the evils of insurance / pharmaceutical / physician / lawyer / regulatory / insert-your-favorite-villain firms.  This is also not a news echo site where I repost articles you can find on countless other web sites.