SAS Life Sciences Academy wins IT Training Award

Fri 27 Apr 2007

The SAS Life Sciences Academy, a joint venture between SAS and SRG, is a Silver Award Winner for Excellence in the 2007 External Training Project of the Year Award, run by the Institute of IT Training.

The Institute of IT Training hosts it’s annual IT Training Awards to recognise outstanding examples of high standards, best practice, innovation and excellence. With 13 categories covering all areas of IT Training, these awards are seen as a benchmark for excellence throughout the UK IT training industry.

The External Training Project Award is presented to an IT training provider that has undertaken a major training project for a client that is innovative in concept and has produced demonstrable performance improvement for the client. In particular, the judges will be seeking clear differentiators from other entrants to the Award, evidence of innovation and client satisfaction, and a strong proposition in response to the challenge “what was your contribution and value-add to the success of the project?”

To date the Academy has trained 17 graduates this year, therefore 17 certified additional SAS Programmers now available and working within the life science sector. With fantastic exam results from the inaugural course run in July 2006, seven out of eight students passed, this compares with 60% pass rate of normal programmers taking the exam. These are incredible results considering that the SAS Life Sciences Academy students have just 3 months programming experience. Due to the success of the training, a bid has recently been placed for the Academy to run internationally in India. In addition, the Finance sector has shown an interest in running a similar tailored programme.

Josie Measures, Operations Director for Satellite, SRG’s clinical outsourcing division, is delighted with the early success the Academy has had. “This unique Training Academy enables us to maintain on ongoing resource of SAS Programmers and further differentiates us from competitors in the staffing marketplace.”

Background

In recent years, SRG have seen a shortage of skilled SAS Programmers with a life sciences background. The Academy was developed with SAS to encourage graduates into this field and give SRG a competitive advantage over other clinical recruitment organisations. The main objective of the Academy is to train, mentor and support graduates beginning their career as SAS Programmers in the life science sector. The Academy prepares them for their new roles by mimicking the work environment, enabling them to make an immediate contribution to their new employer.

Students are recruited by SRG, whilst SAS provide the expertise in software and training. The course content was set through collaboration with SAS course developers and SRG’s internal biometric expertise. The training course spans 4 months and consists of three weeks residential training at SAS, work placement through SRG and a final week of residential study, including professional accreditation.