SAS unveils new analytics platform for life sciences, healthcare

SAS has announced the release of its new analytics platform, SAS Clinical Acceleration Repository, aimed at life sciences and healthcare organisations. Designed to be a secure, cloud-native data repository, the platform intends to streamline the management of clinical research data, integrate with various data sources, and ultimately accelerate the path to regulatory submission.

The latest addition promises to offer a robust solution for common challenges faced by clinical researchers, such as managing and transforming data from multiple sources and preparing it for statistical analysis and regulatory submission. The platform's features include support for electronic signatures, version control, audit trails, continuous monitoring, and data preservation to ensure compliance with security and regulatory standards.

Gail Stephens, Vice President of Healthcare and Life Sciences at SAS, stated, "SAS Clinical Acceleration Repository enables researchers and data scientists to better manage their clinical data and empowers organisations to make informed business decisions. Accelerating and improving the clinical development process helps bring therapies to market sooner and strengthens the bottom line for life sciences and health organisations."

The repository offers a modular, open, and cloud-native content management system, providing features such as intuitive dashboards, production-ready data repositories, and multi-lingual support. This is particularly beneficial for users who need to integrate data from various locations and sources, including electronic data capture systems, in-house clinical data management systems, labs, and contract research organisations. SAS claims that its Viya-enabled solutions can improve efficiency and speed the path to submission, potentially operating up to 30 times faster than commercial and open-source alternatives.

As data privacy and scarcity remain significant hurdles in the healthcare and life sciences sectors, SAS has also introduced SAS Data Maker on SAS Viya. The tool generates synthetic data that statistically mirrors original training data without compromising sensitive patient information. This capability aims to support researchers and data scientists who often face challenges related to data privacy and the availability of real-world data.

Shadi Shahin, Vice President of Product Strategy at SAS, said, "SAS Data Maker uses SAS' cutting-edge, reliable AI models to create statistically accurate data points that augment existing data and capture countless different scenarios. This is particularly valuable in instances where specific real-world data is hard to come by or when there’s a need to detect rare case scenarios."

Global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca intends to leverage SAS Data Maker to enhance its decision-making processes by utilising synthetic data. Brian Dummann, Chief Data Officer at AstraZeneca, commented, "Synthetic data can enhance our ability to make informed decisions from critical data, and thus has the real potential to help accelerate drug discovery and development, ultimately benefiting patients around the world. We look forward to leveraging SAS Data Maker and streamlining how data scientists can access synthetic data for their initiatives."

The announcement follows SAS's previously outlined commitment to investing USD $1 billion in AI-powered industry solutions over three years.