OBJECTIVES: Despite some Brazilian healthcare systems have large health databases, its use to improve health management is still very limited. SUS, the governmental healthcare system, for decades has being collected data from almost 3 billion annual procedures and can provide information of enormous relevance. This work presents an example of what kind on insights can be provided by analytics works.

METHODS: Public available data were collected from the DATASUS database about patients receiving medicines for rheumatoid arthritis during the period 2009-2017. Data were processed using SQL Server Management Studio application (version 17.6), under several indexations and results refinements.

RESULTS: CONCLUSIONS: The main objective of this study was not related to the healthcare by itself, but rather to raise awareness on the need of improving the use of the data intelligence to help the policy makers, decision makers and providers of products and services on increasing the value of healthcare programs and actions in Brazil.