PharmaSUG China 2014 Pre-Conference Training

There are four (4) exciting seminars scheduled for 2014 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 Beijing 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.

All seminars are held in the conference hotel on Thursday September 4, 2014 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.

Space is limited, so sign up early online when you register for the conference! As a special incentive, if you sign up and pay for a seminar by May 31, 2014, you will be entered into a drawing for a SAS book. There will be one winner in each seminar!

Please read carefully the seminar rules (click for Rules) and policies before you register AND keep a copy of your conference registration for your records!

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Time Course Title (click for description) Instructor (click for bio)
8:30 AM - 12:30 PM Advanced Topics in Graph Template Language Sanjay Matange
8:30 AM - 12:30 PM Why ADaM: A Practical Approach on Creating Advanced ADaM Data Structures and using them to Produce Desirable Outputs Kriss Harris
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM Complex Clinical Graphs Using SAS Sanjay Matange
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM Developing Dynamic Macro Applications Arthur Li


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 prior to June 30, 2014 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 30, 2014.
  5. There will be NO REFUNDS on or after June 30, 2014. 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

Advanced Topics in Graph Template Language
Sanjay Matange
Thursday, September 4, 2014, 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Creating a Bar Chart or a Scatter plot is easy using SG Procedures or the ODS Graphics Designer. But what do you do when you need to create an intricate graph with multiple cells, each displaying different data with legends and insets? How do you include special characters in the text? How do you align statistics with the graph along the X or Y axis? How to inset graphs within other graphs? How do you make your templates flexible so the same template can be used with different data?

All these questions and more will be answered in this half-day presentation on advance topics in Graph Template Language. You will learn about different layouts and their special features. You will learn how to create templates for complex and intricate graphs with uniform axes, axis aligned statistics, nested layouts and insets for lattice panels. You will learn how to add custom annotations to graphs, and how to use attribute maps to ensure the groups in the data are displayed with consistent colors and visual attributes.

Audience: Advanced Graph programmers
Required: Moderate to advanced SAS programming skills

Why ADaM: A Practical Approach on Creating Advanced ADaM Data Structures and using them to Produce Desirable Outputs
Kriss Harris
Thursday, September 4, 2014, 8:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Increasingly, Analysis Data Model (ADaM) data structures are becoming the only option to produce tables and figures for safety and efficacy outputs.

This seminar teaches and shows practical approaches of utilizing CDISC ADaM data structures to produce advanced Basic Data Structures (BDS), Adverse Event Analysis Documents (ADAE), and Laboratory Analysis Documents (ADLB) which will then subsequently be used to produce advanced and highly desirable tables and figures for the clinical trial. The outputs include summaries of Treatment Emergent Adverse Events, Change in Tumor Size, Time to Event Analysis and Abnormal Lab Values, and figures of Kaplan Meier Survival Curves, Waterfall Plots, and Napoleon Plots.

Intended Audience Level: Familiar with Base SAS, SDTM, PROC REPORT, PROC SGPLOT, and Graph Template Language.

Complex Clinical Graphs Using SAS
Sanjay Matange
Thursday, September 4, 2014, 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Graphs used in the Health and Life Sciences domain and Clinical Research have special requirements. It is necessary to display large amounts of data in a clear and concise manner including raw data and derived statistics. Intricate multi cell layouts are required to display the data by treatment, visit and other classifiers along with related information correctly aligned with the horizontal or vertical axis.

This half-day presentation will show you in detail how to create such graphs using SG Procedures and GTL. We will review the process necessary to create graphs commonly used in the Pharmaceutical industry. These include the Top Adverse Events with Relative Risk, Distribution of Maximum LFT by Value and Treatment, Hazard Function Plot, ASAT by Time and Treatment, Box Plots of Change from Baseline, Forest plot with subgroups, Adverse Event Timeline graph with Concomitant Medications, Panel of Vital Signs, Panel of Lab Values, Matrix Display of Maximum LFT, Panel of LFT Shifts, LFT Safety Panel by Test and Visit.

Audience: Advanced Graph programmers
Required: Moderate to advanced SAS programming skills.

Developing Dynamic Macro Applications
Arthur Li
Thursday, September 4, 2014, 1:30 PM - 5:30 PM

The SAS® macro facility, which includes macro variables and macro programs, is the most useful tool in developing your own applications. Often, one can easily grasp the basics of macro programming simply by following the syntax. However, simply understanding the syntax without understanding the macro language processing would be of little help in solving more advanced problems. This seminar will focus on the theoretical aspects of macro programming, which includes learning how SAS statements are transferred from the input stack to the macro processor and the DATA step compiler, what role the macro processor plays during this process, and when best to utilize the interface to interact with the macro facility during the DATA step execution. These issues are addressed in this workshop via creating macro applications step-by-step.

Specifically, the following topics will be covered in this workshop: creating macro variables using CALL SYMPUT(X), combining macro variable references with text or other macro references, conditionally and iteratively processing a portion of a macro, situations when best to use CALL EXECUTE, and the macro quoting functions.

This is an intermediate macro language seminar. The intended audiences of this seminar are expected to have some basic knowledge of macro language. The seminar is taught in English; however, the audiences are welcome to raise their questions in both English and Mandarin Chinese.




Instructor Biographies


Kriss Harris

Kriss Harris worked at GlaxoSmithKline for almost 6 years from 2005 to 2011 as a Statistician supporting drug discovery and pre-clinical development. Whilst at GSK he developed an increasing passion for teaching and taught SAS Graphics, SAS Enterprise Guide and Discriminant Analysis to SAS Programmers, Statisticians and Scientists. Since then Kriss has moved on to become an independent Statistical Programmer and is now consulting at Eli Lilly supporting early phase Oncology, which entails defining and creating ADaM datasets and using them to produce tables and figures. Kriss has been an active participant at the SAS Global Forums and PharmaSUG Conferences and in 2010 was also awarded the title SAS Student Ambassador. Kriss is currently writing a book on SAS Graphics creation from SDTM and ADaM datasets with special focus on the Oncology therapeutic area.

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.

Sanjay Matange

Sanjay Matange is R & D Director in the Data Visualization division at SAS Institute, responsible for the development and support of ODS Graphics. This includes the Graph Template Language (GTL), Statistical Graphics (SG) procedures, ODS Graphics Designer and other related graphics applications. Sanjay has been with SAS for over 20 years and is author of two SAS Press books.