We are offering four (4) exciting seminars scheduled for 2015 covering a variety of topics and taught by leading experts! Any of these seminars is sure to enhance your conference experience! Plan now to arrive in Shanghai early to take advantage of these affordable classes. There is an additional fee for taking a seminar. All seminars are half-day and the cost is 780 RMB/$130 USD each! You must register for the conference as an attendee in order to enroll in seminars. Class material will be provided.

To encourage attendees to sign up early, an award will be given to the first person to sign up pay for each seminar. See below.

Space is limited, so sign up early online when you register for the conference! Please carefully read the seminar rules and policies before you register AND keep a copy of your conference registration for your records!

All seminars are held in the conference hotel on Thursday, September 3, 2015, from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. Two seminars are scheduled concurrently in the morning and two in the afternoon. Seminar Registration is from 7:30 AM to 9:30 AM for morning seminars and 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM for afternoon seminars.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Early Sign-up Promotion: Want to win a book on a specific seminar topic? Your will be awarded such a book if you are the first person to register and complete payment for a specific seminar by June 30, 2015! There will be one winner for each of the four classes.

Seminar Policies

Please read carefully the following seminar rules before you register AND keep a copy of your conference registration form for your records!!

1. You must register for the conference as an attendee in order to attend any seminar.
2. You must register for a seminar via the online PharmaSUG China conference registration.
3. If you have paid the full registration and seminar fee, you may cancel a seminar on or before June 29, 2015 and receive a full refund minus a $25 USD/150 RMB administration fee for each cancelled seminar.
4. You may NOT swap one seminar for another after June 29, 2015.
5. There will be NO REFUNDS on or after June 30, 2015. However, if you are unable to attend, the seminar material will be provided to you (via email) without additional charges.
6. Seminar registration is scheduled from 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM for the morning seminars and 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM for the afternoon seminars. At the Registration, each attendee is provided with a special badge which is specific to each seminar. This seminar badge is entry to your seminar that you signed up. Please wear your specific seminar badge in each seminar.
7. You can pay and take two seminars concurrently, i.e., attend one seminar and take the class material from another seminar.
8. Should a seminar be cancelled at any time for any reason, the sole liability of PharmaSUG China and the instructor is a full refund of the seminar fee, and they are NOT liable for any special or consequential damages arising from the cancellation of the seminar.
9. On-site registration will be permitted based on space and availability, and payable by cash (no personal checks) or by major credit card (MC, VISA, Discover, AMEX). That is, the onsite payment cannot be made via money transfer. However, seminar materials may not be available on-site but will be provided via emails later to paid attendees.

For questions about the above seminar policy and availability, please contact Margaret Hung at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Course Descriptions

XML for SAS® Programmers
Lex Jansen, SAS Institute, U.S.
Thursday, September 3, 2015, 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is an open standard that was developed by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) in order to provide a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere.

SAS® includes a number of useful generic tools for working with XML. These include:

• The XML libname engine – Reading and writing XML documents, optionally with an XML Map.
• The SAS XML Mapper – A Java-based, stand-alone application that analyzes the structure of an XML document or an XML schema and generates basic XML syntax for the XML Map.
• The Output Delivery System - ODS MARKUP can use a TAGSET to create XML documents.
• Working with XML in PROC GROOVY

This presentation will introduce XML and will then give an overview of related XML standards for validation (XML Schema, Schematron) and transformation (XPath and XSL). Examples will be given of the way SAS supports XML. A goal of the seminar will be to gain a better technical understanding of XML and what the ways are in SAS to efficiently support those XML standards.

Intended audience: SAS programmers familiar with Base SAS and an interest in a technical presentation.

Required: Some knowledge of HTML is beneficial.

Introduction to R
Arthur Li, City of Hope National Medical Center, U.S.
Thursday, September 3, 2015, 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM

If you are a SAS programmer, have you ever thought of using an alternative language to validate your results that are generated from SAS? R would be the perfect choice for you because R is not only an open-source software, but almost all the tools that you use in SAS to manage your data can also be found in R in similar methods.

The topics in this seminar include the following:

• R objects (vectors, matrices, arrays, lists, and data frames)
• Subsetting objects
• Creating user-defined functions and control structures
• Data input and output
• Applications for file management

The seminar is taught in English; however, the audience is welcome to raise their questions in either English or Mandarin Chinese.

Prerequisite: None

CDISC and XML for SAS® Programmers
Lex Jansen, SAS Institute, U.S.
Thursday, September 3, 2015, 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is an open standard that was developed by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) in order to provide a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere.

CDISC is a global, open, multidisciplinary, non-profit organization that has established standards to support the acquisition, exchange, submission and archive of clinical research data and metadata.

The CDISC XML Technologies Team publishes several CDISC standards in an XML representation. These XML standards include the Operational Data Model (ODM) and several ODM extensions:

• Define-XML
• Controlled Terminology in XML (CT-XML)
• Dataset-XML
• Analysis Results Metadata for Define-XML 2.0.

The SAS® Clinical Standards Toolkit is the framework used by SAS® to support Health and Life Sciences industry data model standards. It is targeted at advanced SAS programmers and supports working with several XML based CDISC standards, such as ODM, Define-XML, Dataset-XML and CT-XML.

This presentation will explain ODM and ODM extensions and will give examples of the way the SAS® Clinical Standards Toolkit supports CDISC XML standards. A goal of the seminar will be to gain a better technical understanding of CDISC based XML standards and what the ways are in SAS to efficiently support those XML standards.

Intended audience: SAS programmers familiar with Base SAS and CDISC

Required: Some knowledge of XML is beneficial.

Data Management in R
Arthur Li, City of Hope National Medical Center, U.S.
Thursday, September 3, 2015, 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM

The focus of this seminar is learning data manipulations and using more advanced features when creating your own R functions.

The topics in this seminar include the following:

• Data Manipulations (Subsetting, sorting, combining, recoding and reshaping data)
• Data Aggregation (apply, sapply, lapply, tapply, by, and aggregate functions)
• Advanced features in writing R functions, including applications for extracting results from statistical functions
• Character Manipulations (Concatenate and extracting strings, regular expressions)

The seminar is taught in English; however, the audiences are welcome to raise their questions in either English or Mandarin Chinese.

Prerequisites:

1. Taking the Introductory R seminar in the morning OR
2. Have previously worked with R programs

Instructor Biographies

Arthur Li Arthur holds an M.S. in Biostatistics from the University of Southern California (U.S.C.). Currently, he is a Biostatistician at the City of Hope National Medical Center. In addition, Arthur developed and has taught a SAS programming course at U.S.C. for the past seven years, as well teaching Biostatistics and Advanced SAS programming courses at U.C.S.D. extension. As well as teaching and working on cancer-related research, Arthur has written a book titled “Handbook of SAS® DATA Step Programming” which was released in 2013. Arthur is a Beijing native and he is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He loves good food and wine, travel, and making new friends. He is always willing to share his personal life experience with you.

Lex Jansen Lex Jansen is a Principal Software Developer at SAS Institute, Health and Life sciences R&D. In this role he develops software that supports data standards in the pharmaceutical industry. He is one of the developers working on the SAS Clinical Standards Toolkit. Prior to working at SAS he was a Senior Consultant, Clinical Data Strategies at Octagon Research Solutions, Inc. In this position Lex worked on client consulting projects dealing with the assessment, design and/or implementation of CDISC standards. Previous to his employment with Octagon, he held various positions in the 16 years that he worked at the pharmaceutical company Organon. Lex holds a MSc in Mathematics from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Since 2008 Lex has been a member of the CDISC XML Technologies Team, where he has been active in the development of various CDISC standards: Define-XML 2.0, Dataset-XML and the Analysis Results Metadata extension for Define-XML 2.0.