Statistical Software for Medical Research
There are many statistical software packages available
today of which a good number of them have the capabilities of running medical
research data analysis.
The recent widespread use of computer software has had a tremendous impact on medical research. The computer has reduced the need for
laborious hand calculations. A computer can perform more calculations faster —
and far more accurately — than humans. Through the efficient use of computers,
medical researchers, biologists, anatomists, and biostatisticians can now
devote more time to improving the quality of raw data during experiments in laboratories, surveys, or records, and interpreting the results.
Medical research data analysis merits special attention as
they deal with human lives and not with material objects or lower animals.
Medical research data are usually gathered through experiments, surveys, or
records.
Top 10 Statistical Software Used for Medical Research
- SPSS
- PASS
- SAS
- InvivoStat
- WinIDAMS
- GraghPad Prism
- Statistica
- R
- Develve
- JMP
SPSS
SPSS stands for Statistical Package for Social Science.
SPSS, a product of IBM, is a comprehensive software tool for statistical
computing and analysis. It has the capability of performing statistical data
analysis tasks with an easy-to-use graphical user interface. SPSS is best suited
for analysis of variance (ANOVA) and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and to
use it, you need to have a good understanding of statistics.
PASS
Power Analysis $ Sample Size is a product of NCSS Statistical Software specifically designed for medical research.
PASS data analysis software tool used for medical research offers capabilities for sample size analysis for more than 965 scenarios. It is used by thousands of medical researchers in the areas of the clinical trial, pharmaceutical research, biostatistical consulting, public health research, veterinary research, epidemiology, oncology, and more. Researchers rate PASS software as the pioneer sample size and power analysis tool for clinical trials, pharmaceuticals, and other areas of medical research, and indeed in all other fields where sample size calculations are handled. It has been in use for over 25 years.
PASS offers sample size calculations for Cluster-Randomized Designs, Cross-Over Designs, Group-Sequential Tests, Conditional Power, confidence Intervals, Non-Inferiority Tests, Mean Comparisons, Nonparametric Tests Equivalence, Normality Tests, Survival Analysis, Superiority Tests, Proportions Tests, Rates and Counts, Regression, and much more of other forms of medical sample data analysis.
SAS
SAS which means Statistical Analysis Software is the basis for most of the new statistical analysis software. National Institute of Health funded the development of this software to aid the agricultural data analysis for improved crop yield. The Software was programmed in 1966 by Anthony Bar of North Carolina State University, and James Goodnight SAS analytics are applied in many fields such as science ( health and agriculture ), engineering, social science (demographic studies), business and finance analysis. SAS has a very good interactive Graphic user interface, although the technicalities in SAS is too complex and there require adequate knowledge of statistics and computing. SAS is compatible with files from most of other statistical software such as SPSS file (.say), JMP (.jmp), Excel (.xls), ext files (.text, .dat, .csv). Data files can also be exported and imported out of or into SAS windows.
R
R is an open source statistical software that has the capabilities of handling data analysis and visualization, and heavy computing. It is programming command line interface (CLI). It has many packages integration which are used for medical researches especially in the areas epidemiology, molecular biology, biostatistics, meta-analyses. R-studio integrated Development Environment (IDE) that contains R tools works the same way Oracle Data Base Engine that uses SQL works. R statistical software tools is relatively new, as it first version was released in 1993 and the version with IDE released in 2011. R is compatible with some other statistical software that uses spreadsheet like Excel, Stars, SAS.
Win1DAMS
Is a statistical analysis software developed for numerical information processing and statistical data analysis. It is basically used for research and development (R&D) project, health service research (HSR), demographic studies, biostatistics. It provides data manipulation and validation facilities for classical and advanced statistical techniques such as regression and correlation analysis, one-way ANOVA, time series analysis, table building including interactive construction of multidimensional tables, graphical exploration of data set like 3D scattergram spinning, and large number REmultivariate.
JMP
JMP which stands for Jonh’s Macintosh Program is statistical software for insight-driven improvement. Is veritable tool for
trial test analysis to know what works and what doesn’t in the areas of Chemistry,
Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology. Its also applicable in business analysis and
insight, design of experiments in biology and agriculture. JMP software
combines interactive visualization with powerful statistics, predictive
modeling and machine learning
John's Macintosh Program has five products suitable for different
industries: JMP, JMP Pro, JMP Clinical, JMP Genomics and JMP Graph Builder App.
JMP allows the use of R and Excel ad-ins, it also offers
capabilities to integrate data files from other tools like SAS, SPSS Stats
etc.
GraphPad Prism
GraphPad Prism also has default feature that combines the
analysis and the graphical results in one snapshot, without having to do each
separately and to prevent alterations in the data. It is mostly used by
biologists, and it helps in performing laboratory research and clinical trial
test using the t-test, one-way ANOVA, logic regression model, survival
analysis, contingency table, life expectancy table.
Develve
Develve is a statistical software that provides a technical
environment for fast and easy analysis and interpretation of experimental data
in science and research and development (R&D). It is suitable for
Experimental Design, Normality Testing, Sample Size calculations, Reliability
Research, Gauge R&R. Use of Develve software helps researchers especially
medical and agric researchers to make accurate decisions rather than making
false assumptions. It is easy to be used by students as well as professional.
It has both free and paid versions.
Statistica
Statistica is a suite of analytical software tool with data
management, analysis visualization, data mining and machine learning. It
enables R programming environment integration which provides additional
analytical techniques.
Originally developed by StatSoft, but now owned by TIBCO,
Statistica as data science Benchwork offers
capabilities to integrate data files from other tools like
Excel,IBM SPSS, JMP, Stata files thereby allowing for import and export of data
from other tools without copying manually.
InvivoStat
It is a powerful tool in the animal experiment as it does not require large sample sizes. It allows the scientist to get a better understanding of the analysis processes and help make an informed decision and to design efficient studies in the future. The beauty is that: it's free-to-use software.