R/Pharma 2024 is coming up Oct 29-Nov 1, 2024. This is a free event, fully virtual. R users in Pharma around the world are encouraged to attend, ask questions, and contribute their opinions!
Register now for free!
For the first time, R/Pharma will be including a dedicated Asia-Pacific (APAC) track which better aligns with Asian time zones and includes 2 pre-conference workshops, 3 keynotes that will be recorded from the global track and then streamed with live discussion sessions thereafter, and 2 live panels, one focusing on Japan, and one on China. In addition, there are 20 contributed talks.
The R Consortium talked with Daniel Sabanés Bové, R/Pharma organizer, co-chair of openstatsware.org, co-founder of RCONIS, a biostatistics consulting and software engineering firm, (co-)author of multiple R packages published on CRAN and Bioconductor, and author of the book “Likelihood and Bayesian Inference: With Applications in Biology and Medicine.” Daniel is giving a 3-hour workshop on October 27 with Joe Zhu (Roche) on “Good Software Engineering Practice for R Packages,” and introducing openstatsware in a talk on 31 October.
We talked to Daniel to find out more about the new APAC track.
Why is R/Pharma adding an APAC track now?
Last year, I was on an extended business trip for Roche for 6 weeks in Shanghai. I was fortunate to attend the first China Pharma R User Group (RUG) Meeting in March 2023, so I have seen how active the community is. I also found out how tough it can be to be based in Asia - you just don’t get enough sleep working with colleagues in Europe and North America!
So when the R/Pharma program committee reported that they have been approached by colleagues in Asia about organizing events in their time zone or region, I used the opportunity of my upcoming move to Taipei mid 2024 to propose organizing a dedicated track in the Asia-Pacific timezones.
The R/Pharma APAC track is designed specifically to help avoid time zone burnout, as well as to foster the APAC regional community.
How does adoption of R in Pharma in APAC differ from other parts of the world?
This is not based on robust data, but from a personal perspective I have noticed one key feature is that biotech and Pharma companies in Asia are concentrated in a few hubs, there is Shanghai, Tokyo, and not too many more. Having said that, I have noticed the rise of Contract Research Organizations (CROs) e.g. in India that are starting to use R - the CROs are catching up. Compare that to Europe and the United States, with a wide range of Pharma companies and organizations spread around many different locations. This also influences the adoption of R and open source technologies in general.
What are some of the key topics being covered in the APAC track?
I was pleasantly surprised at the amount and variety of proposals submitted. We have organized the APAC track’s topics into 6 types of sessions:
- Change management (moving from proprietary software to R)
- Sessional clinical reporting (producing tables and reports)
- Shiny
- Best practices
- AI/ML
- High dimensional data
We have quite an exciting APAC Track program that includes:
- 2 pre conference workshops
- 3 keynote streams, which are recorded keynotes that are slightly delayed to stream during convenient APAC times, plus we have added some discussion after
- 2 live panel discussion (China, Japan)
- 20 contributed talks in total
Full Agenda
A full list of workshops, keynotes, talks and panels is available here.
If you use the filter button you can get just the APAC Track information.
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