Harvey Lieberman | R/Pharma | Posit
From rstudio::global(2021) Pharma X-Sessions, sponsored by ProCogia: R/Pharma is an organization of R enthusiasts who work in the pharma and biotech industries. This presentation summarizes the group and presents some goals for 2021. About Harvey Lieberman: Harvey Lieberman works at Novartis and has been a member of R/Pharma since 2017. For more on R/Pharma: https://www.pharmar.org/ Learn more about the rstudio::global(2021) X-Sessions: https://blog.rstudio.com/2021/01/11/x-sessions-at-rstudio-global/
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Transcript#
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
So hi, my name is Harvey Lieberman and I'm here today to tell you a little bit about the R in Pharma organisation, who we are, what we do and how you can get involved if you're interested. So R is ubiquitous within the pharmaceutical industry, but until recently there hasn't really been a group that works across multiple pharma companies to provide a space for users to interact. So in 2017, a group of R users from several pharma companies got together with other organisations interested in this space, such as the FDA and Harvard to form a group and that's how R Pharma was born.
R Pharma is an R consortium, ISC working group. It's organised by a group of volunteers from multiple organisations and some of the companies involved in setting up the R in Pharma conference are listed on this slide.
Goals and focus of R/Pharma
Now the goal of R Pharma has been to host a scientifically and industry oriented conference focused on the use of R in the development of pharmaceuticals. Conference covers topics such as genomics, drug discovery, PKPD, clinical trials, regulatory compliance and validation, as well as more general topics such as reproducible research and DevOps. The focus is on the use of R as a primary but not necessarily exclusive tool in the drug development process. We also hold workshops at the conference, but since the primary focus is for R practitioners, the workshops are really aimed at those who are already competent in R. Anyone's welcome to present a workshop and we're lucky to have some really amazing presenters as you'll see on some of the later slides.
Now, there are plenty of data science conferences, workshops and even organisations. So what makes us different? Well, for one, we're run by Pharma for Pharma. We concentrate on R, which is not to say we don't have contributing talks that include Python, SAS or even Julia, but just that R is the main focus. The R in Pharma conference that we've held the past three years has been free. Any cost has been assumed by an advisory group, which is generally made up of Pharma companies willing to support the cross fertilisation that occurs when you put a bunch of curious programmers together.
In a similar vein, we have no sponsors and nor do we allow sponsorship at the conference or any events because we believe that community led effort works best when there's no outside influence. We're also focused on diversity and have goals on providing travel grants to those who need assistance in attending the meetings.
we believe that community led effort works best when there's no outside influence.
Conference history: 2018–2020
So why am I here today? Well, I hope you'll understand that the RFOMA is a very open organisation made up of volunteers. We'd welcome anyone wishing to get involved from presenting at a meeting to reaching out to the community with a question and more on how you can get involved in 2021 a little later. But first, I'd like to share some information on how we've evolved since 2018.
RFOMA holds a conference each year. The first was held in 2018 at Harvard. And if you're unable to attend, many of the presentations are available on the RFOMA website. The links on this slide and I invite you to peruse them. We had around 150 attendees, which was limited by the size of the venue, and it ran over two days. We're lucky to have some really amazing keynotes that are listed here. There are a number of amazing general presentations that range from RNA sequencing to how to convert statisticians to data scientists to using our energy XP environment. One thing that was clear from 2018 was that Shiny was the main focus of most presenters work.
In 2019, we repeated the conference, this time expanding to longer workshops each half a day. Once again, the conference was held at Harvard, with a mixture of keynotes and general presentations for around 150 attendees. I'd really like to highlight the workshops here. We reached out to a number of workshop presenters, all of whom agreed to put together a half day workshop at no cost. And all the workshop materials and many of the presentations are available through the RFOMA website. What was interesting in 2019, there was still a focus on Shiny, but there was a huge focus on reproducibility.
So, like many other groups in 2020, early on, we decided to switch to a fully virtual conference. This provided few benefits over historical in-person meeting. First, we could reach more attendees and we received over 500 registrations from 26 countries. We were expecting around 300 and initially had prepared for up to 500. But as soon as it opened, it was clear that we were going to hit 1,000 plus. And the graph on the right is actually really interesting. It shows the registration. This was registration without advertising. So, just through word of mouth, it's amazing how quickly we had registration.
Secondly, we could attract more presenters because people didn't have to travel. There were more people willing to present. In fact, we had over 200 proposals for presentations. Conference was held over three days, each four hours long, running in the morning for those on the West Coast of the US and the evenings in Europe.
So, I also want to highlight the workshops that were held for the 2020 conference. Because of the virtual nature, we could organize a little bit differently and stretched out over multiple days. We ran a total of 11 workshops through the week before the conference, each three to four hours long. There's some incredible presenters who put a lot of time and effort into building them. And all the environments were pre-configured under RStudio Cloud. So, it was very easy for people to come in, use the materials and access them afterwards. Once again, these were all put on by the presenters at no charge. And once again, the conference is free anyway. So, it was a really amazing piece of work.
Looking ahead to 2021
Our pharma meeting for 2021 is almost certainly going to be a fully virtual event. And thinking about the trends we've seen over the past three years, R is definitely growing within the pharma and biotech industries at quite a rate. We now have more mature infrastructures in place, and there's definitely a move towards more submissions using R. In addition, there's greater work in combining languages, such as R and Python and R and SAS.
I want to switch gears just a little bit and talk about something new. We'll be launching a learning and development platform this year called LearnRinPharma.com. And the goal of this is to help pharma professionals develop the skills needed in the drug development space. The RINPharma group will be helping community members put on workshops, lectures, teaching labs in cloud environments with the aim of building practical R skills in a friendly environment. At a very high level, what we're hoping to do is to put together a monthly write-up on a topic and then follow it by a lecture or workshop, even a workflow, maybe a community discussion. This is one way that you, the pharma community, can contribute. If you'd like to lead a discussion group, teach a lab, please get in touch with us. Contact details will be on the final slide. And keep an eye out for LearnRinPharma.com. We'll announce more through a Twitter feed and the RINPharma website.
The first RINPharma conference that we held three years ago was dominated by Shiny apps. We can see how Shiny can play a role in modernizing the drug submission process, but it's fraught with challenges. These can be related to technology, regulatory agencies, training and validation, qualification, and even people and culture, plus others. In 2021, our pharma wants to tackle Shiny for submissions as part of LearnRinPharma.com.
RINPharma is all about the community helping the community. This year, we're looking to launch LearnRinPharma.com, which I spoke about. So if you have an idea for a write-up followed by a lecture, workshop, discussion, please reach out through the website, email or Twitter. We can help you find like-minded people, provide logistics. Some examples might be combining R and Python or building a validation framework. Shiny for submissions will be part of this too.
RINPharma is all about the community helping the community.
Finally, a huge thank you to all of the presenters and workshop hosts over the past three years, putting so much effort, along with the advisory groups and Harvard, who have supported the conferences that we've held. And I thank you for your attention.
