(Author: Roland Rashleigh-Berry
Date: 29 Dec 2011)
Introduction
This is a brief summary of the Spectre clinical trials reporting system.
All its components as well as its extensive documentation can be downloaded
from the main web site whose URL is below. You should refer to that web
site to gain a fuller understanding of the system.
Spectre has been made available to the public for educational purposes.
The reporting system is in everyday use by a pharmaceutical company. Although
it is in use, you should not assume that the system has been validated
for this purpose. If you use this system for clinical reporting purposes,
rather than just educational purposes, then you must comply with industry
regulations and your own Standard Operating Procedures for QC purposes.
Features
Creates scripts to run dataset build and report production programs in
the correct order automatically
All runs are done in batch mode and output is pure text output (or PostScript
for figures)
Runs every SAS program independently to avoid one program affecting another
Has a system for handling titles and footnotes such that these can be kept
separate from reporting code modules
The titles and footnotes system has the potential to call reporting macros
Creates a log of every run with both start and stop times and the user
who launched the run
Creates a log of all outputs produced
Contains two powerful tools for creating safety tables which require minimal
parameters set
Output can be produced in more than one client style
Page labels of the general form "Page x of Y" are automatically added
Individual page margins can be specified for a study
Font size can be specified and the resulting line size and page size automatically
calculated
Extensive support is provided for producing bookmarked PDFs from the output
(Unix/Linux platforms only)
Contains a large number of shell scripts that help add power to the Unix
environment
Contains a collection of SAS macros that can be used to simplify writing
reporting modules
Has its own set of Unix learning materials to bring programmers up to speed
with the Unix environment
Study Reporting
The study reporting process flow is summarized on the page whose URL is
below. Reading it will give you an idea of what it is like to use Spectre
for study reporting.