The SAS Migration Reality for CROs
The pharmaceutical research landscape is shifting rapidly. Major pharma companies like Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Roche, and Johnson & Johnson are transitioning from SAS to open-source alternatives. Several companies have successfully submitted complete studies, and most are far down the road to ending their reliance on SAS. Yet many Contract Research Organizations (CROs) remain locked into SAS ecosystems, constrained by client contracts and thin operating margins that make enterprise-wide migrations financially prohibitive.
You don’t need to migrate everything at once. You need to migrate what matters most.
Your Mission-Critical Macros Are Your Strategic Assets
Every CRO has them: those essential SAS macros that power multiple projects across teams. Perhaps they were developed by a former employee whose institutional knowledge walked out the door. Maybe they’re a tangled web of conditional logic that somehow produces exactly the right outputs every time. These macros represent years of domain expertise, regulatory compliance patterns, and battle-tested analytical workflows.
When pharma clients start requesting R-based deliverables, these legacy macros become both your greatest asset and your biggest bottleneck.
Why Generic AI Tools Fall Short for SAS-R Migration
Current AI models aren’t trained effectively for SAS-R migrations. They lack fluency in both languages and miss the nuanced requirements of pharmaceutical statistical programming. Generic translation tools can handle basic syntax conversion but fail spectacularly when encountering:
- Complex conditional workflows spanning hundreds of lines
- Proprietary SAS functions with no direct R equivalents
- CDISC-compliant data structures and validation patterns
- Regulatory submission requirements that demand exact output matching
I don’t need to tell you the result. ChatGPT will give you a .R file that seems to run fine, includes error handling and unit tests, admiral code commenting… It fails utterly at validation. This is the current state of SAS-R AI tools.
ProCogia’s Proven SAS-R Migration Expertise
Our statistical programming team has specialized in SAS-to-R migrations for nearly a decade. We’ve successfully migrated entire codebases for multiple pharmaceutical companies, maintaining perfect output fidelity while dramatically improving performance and maintainability.
Our approach combines:
- Deep bilingual expertise: Our team is equally fluent in SAS and R, understanding the idioms and best practices of both languages
- Regulatory experience: Extensive work with CDISC standards and FDA submission requirements
- AI-enhanced efficiency: Custom RAG systems and specialized prompts trained on our migration corpus
- Validation rigor: Line-by-line output verification ensuring identical statistical results
We focus our human expertise on the final 10% that AI cannot handle, delivering migrations that are both fast and flawlessly accurate.
From Legacy SAS Macros to Modern R Functions
Our macro-to-function migration process transforms your critical SAS macros into maintainable, documented R functions. We preserve all functionality while improving:
- Code readability: Clear, documented functions that new team members can understand
- Performance: R’s vectorized operations often outperform equivalent SAS procedures
- Integration: Seamless compatibility with modern R ecosystems and the pharmaverse
- Version control: Git-friendly code structure supporting collaborative development
Flexible Engagement Models for Any Budget
We understand CRO economics. Our engagement models scale to your needs:
Targeted Macro Migration ($35k-$50k, 4-week turnaround) Perfect for migrating 1-3 mission-critical macros that unlock R capabilities for key client projects.
Emergency Consulting (1-week minimum) Need to get unstuck on a specific migration challenge? Our experts can provide targeted problem-solving and guidance.
Enterprise Migration (custom scope) Ready to transition your entire analytical infrastructure? We scale with onshore, nearshore, and offshore resources for economical enterprise-wide migrations.
What You Get
Every migration includes:
- Functionally identical R code with validated output matching
- Comprehensive documentation explaining translation decisions and R implementation
- Timeline assessment for additional macros in your portfolio
- Knowledge transfer to bring your team up to speed on the migrated code
For proprietary SAS functions without R equivalents, we provide multiple options: exact functional recreation, statistically equivalent alternatives, or guidance on suitable replacement approaches.
Start Small, Think Strategic
You don’t need to bet the company on a massive migration project. Start with your most valuable macro. Prove the concept. Show your clients you can deliver R-based solutions without compromising quality or timeline.
The pharmaceutical industry is moving toward open-source analytics. Position your CRO as a forward-thinking partner rather than a legacy constraint.
Ready to Begin?
Contact ProCogia today to discuss your specific macro migration needs. We’ll provide a no-obligation assessment of your codebase and a clear timeline for getting your most critical SAS macros running reliably in R.
The question isn’t whether your clients will request R-based deliverables. The question is whether you’ll be ready to deliver them.
