[R] Use of R in clinical trials

[Cody Hamilton]

Points regarding the advantages of LaTex are very well taken. If I were fortunate enough to have complete ownership of the document (as might be the case with a DSMB report produced by the Biostat group), then LaTex would be a wonderful choice.  Though I am not a LaTex user, I can easily imagine that the productivity gains could be considerable.

Unfortunately, in most cases the Biostatistics group is responsible for providing a relatively small piece of the overall document which is owned by another group that inevitably uses MS Office.


--- On Wed, 2/17/10, Erik Iverson <eriki at ccbr.umn.edu> wrote:

> From: Erik Iverson <eriki at ccbr.umn.edu>
> Subject: Re: [R] Use of R in clinical trials
> To: "Frank E Harrell Jr" <f.harrell at vanderbilt.edu>
> Cc: "Cody Hamilton" <cody.shawn at yahoo.com>, r-help at r-project.org
> Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 9:05 PM
> Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
> > Cody,
> > 
> > How amazing that SAS is still used to produce reports
> that reviewers hate and that requires tedious low-level
> programming.  R + LaTeX has it all over that approach
> IMHO.  We have used that combination very successfully
> for several data and safety monitoring reporting tasks for
> clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry.
> > 
> > Frank
> 
> I used to work for a research group that also used R +
> LaTeX to produce DSMB reports for clinical trials.  If
> the DSMB members had only been exposed to SAS reports
> before, you could not get them to stop praising the quality
> of the R + LaTeX reports, even years into a trial.
> 
> Erik
>