Kevin, Mary, et all,

I invite you to consider that SAS Institute has a Life Sciences Division that was formed a few years ago to develop and support business in the healthcare / Life Sciences arena/industry.

http://www.sas.com/industry/pharma/index.html http://www.sas.com/industry/pharma/

I don't think that Micorsoft has a "Life Sciences" Division, but I may be wrong.

From SAS.com's website: "SAS among top business intelligence vendors in Healthcare Informatics 100" http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/062303/news1.html- 19.7KB - SAS Institute - healthcare-informatics: 1, 100: 10, healthcare-informatics 100: 30 "SAS named number six on Healthcare Informatics Top 100" http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/071607/Healthcareinfo100.html

SAS has been big in the biostatistics and pharma industries for years, both of which fall into the healthcare arena.

To see the official HCI 100 list, go to http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/hci100. For some reason this webpage takes a long time to load.

be seeing you, Ray "I am not a number, I am a free man." Number 6

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Viel, Kevin <kviel@sjha.org> wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of John >> Burton >> Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 2:59 PM >> To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU >> Subject: Re: SAS Institute mentioned in Healthcare Informatics magazine's >> top 100 healthcare IT firms >> >> Kevin, >> >> EMR is only a small part of Healthcare IT. HIT is much more than just >> the software created only for physicians and hospitals to use. >> >> Healthcare Informatics is very important and huge in the healthcare >> arena. SAS is the dominant language used in Healthcare Informatics. >> SAS is used by other businesses in the healthcare industry other than >> the healthcare insurers. UNOS is one of those businesses. >> >> I am sure there are others here in the healthcare industry who can >> attest to using SAS as a healthcare data analysis tool. > > I myself use it. I code a bit of perl, SQL, and VBA, too. (I know, I know, .NET, fool). It just seems strange to say that SI is an HIT company because its products can be applied in the field. Is Microsoft an HIT company: OS, Excel, Access, Outlook, Silverlight, XML, et cetera. > > SI has not entered the genomics or MRS games, yet. Could they? I doubt it would be worth the expenditure of their resources, but to gather the majority of information generated about and by medical practice will require a major revolution on the scale of the moon landings and dominating leadership. It will require creation of standards so that instruments all "talk" in the same way once they are deployed and used. It will require stringency about fields and tables and the manner that these data are entered. > > > > Kevin Viel, PhD > Senior Research Statistician