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Interview with Coauthors of New Health Care Book

Authorline chats with Douglas Faries, Robert Obenchain, and Josep Haro, coauthors of the new book Analysis of Observational Health Care Data Using SAS. Coauthor Andrew Leon was unavailable for this interview.

• Authorline (AL): Your book has just returned from the printer. How does it feel to have completed this project?
• Douglas Faries (DF): It is extremely satisfying to see the combined efforts of many talented individuals come together in a final product. This required a lot of hard work but it was a very rewarding process to start with vision and now see a successful end result.
• Robert Obenchain (RO): I feel like much of the work has just started. There is a real need for better training materials in this general area.
• Josep Haro (JH): This a collaborative work in which many professionals have tried to transmit their experience in the analysis of health care data. I think the book will be a real help for researchers in the field and I am very proud of it.

• (AL): What was your motivation for writing this book?
• (DF): We saw the growing use of observational research in medical decision making and understood the many challenges in the analysis of observational data. Despite the existence of some very good methodology research in this area, there was a noted lack of consistent application of quality analysis and reporting in the literature. Thus, we saw a great need for a resource that would make high quality, thorough, transparent analysis of observational data easy to perform.
• (RO): Writing a book chapter on "Local Control" gave me enough space to thoroughly discuss and illustrate the many advantages of this new approach. There's a lot of new information crammed into those 44 pages, and I can only hope that others develop anywhere near my enthusiasm for the subject.
• (JH): For many years I have been working on the design and analysis of treatment outcomes. Many people have helped me in finding the best design of a study or the best method to analyze some data. However, methodological information is widely dispersed. For me, writing the book constitutes a return to all the people who have helped me during these years.

• (AL): Who is the audience for this book?
• (DF): Potential audiences that would find value in this book include statisticians, health outcome researchers, epidemiologists, statistical programmers, medical researchers, economists, professors, and graduate students.
• (RO): Observational studies would have even greater future potential for impacting health care practice and policy if only they were planned and analyzed much better than they have been to date. Observational studies are starkly different from traditional randomized clinical trials; they pose truly different questions and problems that must be addressed in new and different ways.

• (AL): What features of the book are you especially pleased with?
• (DF): I am pleased with the applicability of the book. That is, there is enough background and theory to allow for an understanding of the issues, but there is a focus on the implementation issues that is often lacking in other works.
• (RO): The SAS Press staff did a great job of reformatting the diverse chapters and helping them fit together better.
• (JH): I think the book is both comprehensive and practical.

• (AL): How will your book benefit SAS users?
• (DF): As each chapter includes background information, data examples, SAS code, output, and references, the book allows researchers to understand and implement these methods in accordance with the highest quality manuscripts and guidelines that exist for these topics. Thus, the book should be beneficial to researchers who use observational data (from sources such as prospective and retrospective observational studies, patient registries, claims databases, …) for analyses and decision-making.
• (RO): I have provided both JMP scripts and SAS macros for my "Local Control" approach. This could help encourage health outcomes researchers to use these two powerful systems together.
• (JH): SAS users will have clear indications on how to implement classic and novel methods for the analysis of health outcomes. The intention of the book is to be a reference in the area that could be consulted at any time when conducting these types of analysis.

• (AL): How did you decide to co-author the book? How did you divide your responsibilities?
• (JH): I was invited by Doug Faries to co-edit the book. I respect him as an eminent researcher. I was proud of the invitation and happy to collaborate on the book.

• (AL): Were there any specific rewards or challenges in working with numerous contributors to the book?
• (DF): The large number of contributors was both a challenge and a rewarding experience. Timeline challenges and getting everyone on board with the specific goals takes effort. However, I was able to meet several experts in the field through this process and my knowledge of these areas has grown dramatically through these interactions.
• (RO): Doug really carried the load for everybody else.
• (JH): It is always challenging to keep consistency among different chapters. However, I think the co-authors have all made an effort and their review of the chapters has achieved the appropriate consistency.

• (AL): What did you learn while writing this book that would be important for other authors to know?
• (JH): That it is critical to have a clear idea of what you want for the book and what it should be for potential readers. It is also very important to work with people you feel happy to work with.

• (AL): How did you decide to publish with SAS?
• (DF): I have found several SAS Press books to be valuable during my career and wanted to provide a resource that a wide audience could implement. In addition, I had been a chapter contributor in a SAS Press book published by a colleague a couple of years ago.
• (RO): Obvious choice!!!
• (JH): I have always used SAS books and I think it is the best press to make sure that this book will be distributed to interested professionals.

• (AL): How were you able to balance your time between your career and writing this book?
• (RO): It really helped me to be retired. Besides, I'm also developing training materials in this subject area.
• (JH): It was not easy, but I think the collaboration with other co-editors was excellent and an incentive to work on the book.

• (AL): How do you enjoy spending your free time?
• (RO): I don't really want to feel more "free." I want to stay young …at least, of mind! I love exploring new methods and software for data analysis, visualization and statistical computing. I don't want to spend very much of the impressive computing power available to me today just playing games and watching videos!
• (JH): I like jogging, playing basketball and spending time with my family.