The role of a statistical SAS programmer has been vastly expanded due to cost-cutting measures, limited resources, and outsourcing stra tegies implemented by many companies in the pharmaceutical industry. The current expectations of statistical SAS programmers are significantly different from those of traditional statistical SAS programmers. They are asked to participate in a wider variety of activities, such as clinical trial database setup, CRF annotations, medical monitoring, data quality checking, management of outsourcing partners, etc

The traditional expectation of a statistical SAS programmer is to work with a ‘clean’ database to create analysis datasets, and produce SAS based reports as guided by the protocol and statistical analysis plan (SAP) provided by the statistician.

• Import data from disparate sources.
• Transform data into useful analysis data structures.
• Create tables, figures, and listings to support clinical reporting.
• Export data and reports to sponsor, FDA, and other clients.

The next thing that you ought to check is an implausible read the experience of the service supplier.