By presenting the latest advances in statistical modeling and reproducible data processing with direct application in clinical and medical practice, the R/Medicine conference is at the forefront of the digital transformation in the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Its laser-sharp focus on the R framework and ecosystem has naturally caught our attention at Appsilon. With some impressive R Shiny projects under our belt and a mission to use data for good, Appsilon is joining R/Medicine as a sponsor. Two of our Shiny experts will be giving non-sponsored presentations at the conference: Damian Rodziewicz, President & Co-founder of Appsilon; and Oriol Senan, R/Shiny Developer with a background in computational biology. 

The 2021 edition of the R/Medicine conference has a virtual format and will take place online between 24 and 27 August, with sessions between 11 AM and 7 PM EDT. Read on to learn more about the event, speakers, program, and registrations.

• About the R/Medicine conference
• R/Medicine 2021: program and speakers
• Appsilon highlights at R/Medicine
• How to register for the R/Medicine conference

About the R/Medicine conference

R/Medicine is an annual conference focused on the use of R in medical applications. Their mission is to showcase new tools, algorithms, and methods for analyzing medical and clinical data with the biggest potential to meet the complex needs of the medical and pharmaceutical industry.

At R/Medicine, R is celebrated as a go-to programming environment with unmatched efficiency in statistical computing and data visualization, helping data scientists and medical practitioners quickly deliver reproducible research and better communicate scientific knowledge. The open source nature of R makes it both accessible and versatile. R/Medicine recognizes that and promotes R as a mighty tool in the hands of data analysts working on clinical trial design and clinical trial data analysis, personalized medicine, as well as patient data management, genetic data analysis, and reproducible medical research.

The R/Medicine conference is not only a showcase of the latest advances in medical data science. It’s a forum for collaboration, bringing together the R community to nurture knowledge transfer and inspire new research projects rooted in R. Data analysts, medical and pharmaceutical researchers, R/Shiny developers, and medical practitioners: all answer the call of R/Medicine to push the boundaries of data visualization and statistical computing in medical therapies and clinical research.

R/Medicine 2021: program and speakers

The 2021 program for the R/Medicine conference covers a broad range of topics with a strong focus on use cases and real-world applications of R functions and R packages in medical data science projects and clinical practice.

The main themes for this year’s R/Medicine presentations are:

• clinical trials
• analytic bias and data ethics
• new analysis approaches and R packages
• data visualization
• reproducibility
• data management and analysis workflows
• applied uses of R in clinical practice

Data for Good in action! Read more about fighting COVID-19 with data science

Different presentation formats are designed to cater to all needs: from 10-minute lightning talks and 20-minute regular talks, up to 3-hour workshops in the form of short courses.

Tuesday and Wednesday (24 and 25 August) are dedicated to intense tutorials, meant both as an introduction to R for medical data and research, as well as deep dives into medical data security or mapping spatial health data.

Thursday and Friday (26 and 27 August) are the main conference days with opening remarks by Peter Higgins: a distinguished clinician and researcher, director of the IBD Research Group at the University of Michigan, leading ongoing research projects funded in part by Janssen Biotech, Inc., Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and AbbVie. Each conference day ends with closing remarks by Stephan Kadauke: Assistant Director of the Cell and Gene Therapy Lab at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, pioneering clinical data science education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Among the keynote speakers is Karandeep Singh: Assistant Professor of Learning Health Sciences, Internal Medicine, Urology, and Information at the University of Michigan, leading the Machine Learning for Learning Health Systems Lab. His presentation on bringing machine learning models to the bedside at scale might give you more insight into biomedical informatics and using ML methods to model electronic health records and registry data.

Another keynote presentation will be given by Ziad Obermeyer: Associate Professor and Blue Cross of California Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley, with a research and teaching focus on machine learning as a decision support tool in healthcare. During his talk, he’ll be dissecting algorithmic bias and pointing out ways to limit racial and economic injustice in predictive analytics.

The R/Medicine conference program is packed with R stories from the medical trenches. From managing registry data and processing drug names, through predicting patient outcomes and clinical natural language processing, to mapping health data and generating graphical displays for clinical trials – these are just some of the focal points on the R/Medicine agenda. See the full schedule of the conference to explore more.

Appsilon highlights at R/Medicine

Damian Rodziewicz and Oriol Senan will be giving non-sponsored presentations at R/Medicine to give a sneak-peek into Appsilon’s unique know-how of R and Shiny, with a special focus on medical data science.

Read about Appsilon’s contribution to public health data sharing and using R Shiny to create risk heat maps for COVID-19

Damian Rodziewicz, co-founder of Appsilon, will walk us through one of the key applied uses of R in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. His talk on R markdown and {officedown} to automate clinical trial reporting will introduce you to all the ways you can use R markdown and the {officedown} R package to generate advanced Word, PDF, and other data documentation formats vital in clinical trials. The presentation includes setup and implementation tips, complete with guidelines for deployment using RStudio Connect, to help you streamline clinical trial data reporting and optimize analysis workflows in regulated environments.

This pill of R know-how is a must for all clinical data analysts and clinical researchers looking to boost reproducibility and improve quality assurance procedures with thoughtful automation. Save the date on Friday, 27 August, and tune in at 4:50 PM EDT to watch Damian Rodziewicz at R/Medicine.

Oriol Senan is an R/Shiny Developer with a background in computational biology. His poster session on how to improve your data analysis workflow using Shiny and pipeline automation is a rare treat for medical data scientists in need of efficient medical data management. Recognizing how quality and reproducibility can affect the interpretation and analysis of medical data, Oriol will give you a quick overview of Shiny as a tool for data visualization.

A Shiny dashboard can empower you to quickly model, compare and share data compiled in plots, charts, or tables. This property of Shiny could be a game-changer in many data-driven medical contexts. If you’re a data scientist, a clinical researcher, or a project manager in a medical data science team, visit the R/Medicine conference on Wednesday, 25 August at 2:10 PM EDT and learn about Shiny with Oriol Senan.

Read more about improving data quality with Appsilon’s data validator R package

With a keen eye on all things Shiny, we’re excited to see so many R/Medicine presentations dedicated to our data science tool of choice:

• Robert Lobato will talk about how R and Shiny dashboards can help improve quality in anesthesiology and perioperative care (Thursday, 26 August, 1:17 PM EDT).
• Andreas Soteriades & Chris Beeley will focus on scaling up and deploying Shiny and text mining for national health decisions (Thursday, 26 August, 5:38 PM EDT).
• Richard Hanna & Stephan Kadauke will show how to use R Shiny to report outcomes of stem cell transplants (Thursday, 26 August, 6 PM EDT).
• Judith Lewis & Stephany Duda will talk about Shiny and REDCap for a global research consortium (Thursday, 26 August, 6:34 PM EDT).
• Laura Wiley & David Mayer will showcase {ReviewR}, a Shiny app for reviewing clinical records (Thursday, 26 August, 6:56 PM EDT).
• Marcus Adams will focus on deploying a GxP Shiny application (Friday, 27 August, 5:02 PM EDT).

How to register for the R/Medicine conference

If you haven’t registered for the R/Medicine conference yet, don’t worry: you can still do it on the official website. The registration fee is rather moderate, with considerable discounts for academics and students. It includes recordings of presentations and workshops, so it’s a great way to collect quality subject material for future reference.

You can also follow R/Medicine on Twitter to stay on top of the latest updates and join the conversation about R hacks for medical data scientists.

Hope to see you at R/Medicine 2021!

Let’s Build Something Beautiful Together

Appsilon provides innovative data analytics, machine learning, and managed services solutions for Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, and non-profit organizations. We deliver the world’s most advanced R Shiny applications, with a unique ability to rapidly develop and scale enterprise Shiny dashboards. Our proprietary machine learning frameworks allow us to deliver Computer Vision, NLP, and fraud detection prototypes in as little as one week.

Appsilon Tech Team Members regularly contribute to open-source packages. This is part of our commitment to positively impact the world through technology. Discover our growing list of open-source R Shiny packages at shiny.tools. Consider dropping a star on your favorite shiny packages at our Github to let us know we’re on the right track.

Do you have any comments or questions? Swing by our feedback threads, like the discussion at our new shiny.fluent package. We love to hear from the R community. If you spot an issue or room for improvement, don’t hesitate to send a pull request.

Article R/Medicine Conference 2021 Sponsored By Appsilon comes from Appsilon | End­ to­ End Data Science Solutions.