HASUG MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT AND FLASH – 11/10/2005 at BMS in Wallingford, CT

Our next meeting is Thursday November 10th, at Bristol-Myers Squibb 5 Research PKWY Wallingford, CT 06492 from 9:00 am to noon

Our Topics and Speakers are: ________________________________________ MULTILABEL - An useful addition to the FORMAT procedure

Venky Chakravarthy, Bristol-Myers Squibb

PROC FORMAT is an indispensable tool for the SAS programmer. Until recently, two of its limitations were the inability to specify (1) overlapping ranges and (2) secondary labels. The MULTILABEL option introduced in version 8.2 overcomes these limitations. It also has some powerful applications in generating tables for Clinical trials data. This paper illustrates MULTILABEL with an example to summarize age categories where some age values are mapped to more than one category. The paper also addresses some of the limitations of this new option. A bonus feature of this paper is the coverage given to some useful enhancements to PROC MEANS that are especially relevant to summary tables generation in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Venky Chakravarthy has been a SAS User since 1991. He has presented a number of papers at SUGI, PharmaSUG and Local SUG meetings. He is also a SAS-L contributor from time to time. He has plenty of experience providing SAS consulting and contracting services. Venky has been specializing in the Pharmaceutical industry for the last 6 years and he currently works at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company as a full time employee. Venky received his Ph.D in Social Welfare from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Character Function Fun in SAS9

Tim Muir, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

SAS has always seemed to have the same basic character functions, like TRIM, LEFT, SCAN, SUBSTR, and INDEX, to name a few, which we have all become quite familiar with. In version 9, there are some new functions around that will take the bite out of, and should even replace some of these older functions. This presentation will examine some of these character functions.

A SAS user for 13 years, Tim has gained his experience supporting statistical analyses and research, primarily in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. At HP/Compaq, he worked to analyze customer behavior and trends for computer technology purchase and development. While in the Boston area, he participated in BASUG steering committee and served as webmaster. Back in Connecticut now, he participates on the HASUG steering committee, and works in the IT department at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, where he provides SAS programming and site support to Research and Development.

Generating SAS code using SAS

Xiu Chen, Synectechs, Inc. Working with clinical trial data, we often need to repeat the same analysis for a number of similar studies. To save time and improve accuracy, it is important to make our programs efficient and reusable. SAS macros are often employed to achieve this purpose. An alternative to using SAS macros is to write programs that write additional code so that the combined programs are data driven and depend less on user input. This technique can also be used to produce code that is highly repetitive and yet specific to the data being analyzed. The presenter will demonstrate several cases and techniques based on clinical trials data.

Xiu Chen holds a M.S. in Statistics and has been working with clinical trials data since 1992. She has been an essential participant in five NDA submissions and has worked on numerous projects in a variety of therapeutic areas. Ms. Chen is president of Synectechs, Inc., which she co- founded over ten years ago.

You can register for the next meeting, get directions and read our latest version of the HASUG Flash at http://www.hasug.org/

Look forward to seeing you there,

Regards, The HASUG Steering Committee