SAS® Business Intelligence for the Health Care Industry Reviews
Renu Gehring, a respected SAS business intelligence (BI) educator and consultant, has written an excellent text that helps healthcare professionals learn how to use and exploit the SAS enterprise business intelligence (EBI) platform quickly. She really explores how to get the most from each part of the SAS EBI toolset with examples for developers and users. Additionally, she addresses common security concerns with authority and shows methods for protecting healthcare data. A must-have book for any healthcare SAS BI professional.
Tricia Aanderud
And Data, Inc.
Renu has created a book that will shed light on the complex and valuable tool SAS has developed. A book dealing with Healthcare Informatics and SAS is timely considering the multitude of ways that SAS Enterprise BI can be used to provide insight into the ever transforming data of a healthcare organization. Briefly, SAS Enterprise BI provides users with several key tools: SAS Information Maps, SAS Stored Processes, SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, SAS Web Report Studio, SAS BI Dashboard, SAS OLAP Cube Studio, and SAS Enterprise Guide. These applications can be seamlessly integrated with each other, and Renu's book does exactly that.
Healthcare is at the forefront of the media's and people's minds. This book will provide you with an immeasurably helpful example data set built around a fictional insurance company. The data set is explained thoroughly and guides the numerous examples in the book. Peppered throughout are gems of often-hard-to-find code and solutions that can be used in any SAS project.
Her examples range from those that get your feet wet to examples that show a pervasive understanding of the functioning of the SAS system. Renu encourages you to think about the process and use that same process in developing your own reporting applications. She also shows you how to use SAS Enterprise Guide to write your code, which is especially useful in OLAP cubes and MDX code development.
Renu has created a work that will get you started using the SAS system to deliver data insight. You will find that you have been given something more than just a starter manual.
Sumner Williams
I think Renu Gehring's SAS Business Intelligence for the Health Care Industry: Practical Applications is a standout technical work that rewards the reader with the fruits of the author's exhaustive exploration of the capabilities of the SAS business intelligence tools. One feels in reading this like you're profiting from many hours spent discovering the limits of what the array of SAS BI tools can do. The book does an excellent job of making the reader aware of the extensive library of tools available: SAS Stored Processes, SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, SAS Web Report Studio, dashboards, SAS OLAP Cube Studio, SAS Information Map Studio; it's all here. Gehring introduces these tools and then develops the healthcare applications for each. The data used in the applications is similar to data healthcare that analysts actually work with, and I think even veteran BI developers will find some gems here. For example, embedding a link to a stored process inside stored process output, and making what is usually static results dynamic, are especially creative techniques.
Another strength of the book concerns the variety of applications that are developed. Gehring emphasizes how different parts of the organization can benefit from the implementation of SAS BI. The finance department can use Excel to run stored processes to create revenue reports. Clinicians in medical management can use the web reports and information maps that analysts have developed to create patient profiles and improve patient care.
Clif HindmarshHealthcare Analyst