[Planning] Invite orgs to contribute pkg list approved for GxP Use

[aclark02-arcus]

This issue has two prongs to it, with the ultimate goal of increasing our rate of participation overall:

• A. invite a few orgs into participating so we can learn how to best frame the "ask"
• B. compose a "call to participate" in a public sphere, manifesting in three comms channels:
  • website
  • Posit Conf
  • Revisiting Org Use Case interviews (looping in @anujadas185)

For part A, here is my initial distribution list:

• Preetham @ Merck
  • Would love to contribute anonymously... checking if their are objections internally
• James @ Roche
  • open-sourced their list on github.io
• Eric @ Biogen
  • said anonymous may work
• Andy @ GSK
  • Checking to see if they can do something similar to Roche, but will likely be able to share anonymously without much difficulty from legal side
• Sam Parmar & Narayanan Iyer @ Pfizer
  • Checking with Mike Smith and waiting for approval
• Nick Masel @ JnJ
  • Would love to contribute... checking if their are objections internally

Initial email request, sent 7/1

Hi Eric,

I think we talked about this at a past R Validation Hub community meeting and I think you said you could provide a list for Biogen, but please forgive me if this is your first time hearing about it. The {riskassessment} app has undergone steady development and is now ready to accept CSVs from pharma orgs who want to openly share what R pkgs they've approved for use within their GxP environment(s). This data will be integrated within a special deployment of the {riskassessment} app so that any user can look up a package of interest, like {stringr} for example, and see which orgs also allow {stringr} for GxP use. This will be a big step towards gaining an industry consensus on which subset(s) of pkgs are generally accepted by pharma orgs. Obviously, app users can choose what they want to do with this info and we make no promises / guarantees about these pkg collections.

Initially, we hope to gather this info from the orgs who participate regularly with the R Validation Hub (like Merck, Pfizer, Biogen, GSK, etc) to get us started. In the meantime, we'll post an announcement on the pharmar.org site soliciting contributions from any/all orgs who are interested in participating. I'm working on composing that post right now. The hope is that we'll have data gathered for 4 - 5 pharma orgs before our Posit Conf Presentation on Aug 11. But in order to prepare, we're hoping to get Biogen's list sometime this week, perhaps before Tues, July 9 if that works for you?

If you have any questions, please feel free to pose the question here! But we're asking for a CSV with the following fields:

• package name
• package version
• assessment date
• risk decision (could be "low risk", "medium risk", "high risk" or some alternative, like "approved" for example)
• additional considerations (optional)

For now, we just plan to collect this info once, but we'll see how well it's received by the community and if warranted, consider gathering an update every year, or perhaps every 6 months.

Thanks!

Aaron Clark

[aclark02-arcus]

Hi @jthompson-arcus, @dgkf, & @emilliman5:

Per our conversations today, I wanted to reframe the messages that I sent out yesterday, so thought I'd run my follow-up past you all to make sure we're aligned. Expand the "Initial email request, sent 7/1" section above to read the initial ask, and then how I want to re-frame things given our conversation today.

But first, an update: James Black has already gotten back to me. He has received the green light from legal and he plans to have a repo published very soon... as early as the end of week, but perhaps next week. I'm thankful James is attacking it so quickly so that it could be considered at a model for other orgs to follow, if they so choose.

So, here is my planned follow-up email. One question I have in particular is about # 2 below. Is that the scope we want to go with?

Follow up

Hi Preetham,

I wanted to follow up to my request yesterday after having conversations with Doug & other parties interested in contributing to the initiative. We've strategized a few options / pathways forward that we think will ultimately help increase the rate of participation in this project from other orgs in the space.

First, there are three big take-aways:

1. We are not going to publish this data in the {riskassessment} app. Why? We don't want to suggest that this data is somehow actionable to an org qualifying a package for GxP use. That is, we don't want orgs to conclude that a package is somehow qualified just because "Merck" or some other org has qualified it for some unknown use case. Instead, we plan to only analyze the results internally and do two things with it:
   • Observe & analyze the data, then follow up with a blog post to our site (pharmar.org) that summarizes what we found, in aggregate. It's important to note that orgs can choose to remain anonymous or be named in the publication. Either way, we'll make sure we have sufficient participation from the entire industry first, and summarize by org size (small, medium, large).
   • share the data with our Regulatory R Repo workstream since knowing which pkgs are generally qualified will greatly help them identify useful benchmarks / thresholds cutoffs when building consensus on measurable quality metrics.
2. We want to narrow the scope of the ask: previously, I my request was very broad, but we want to tighten things up and instead ask, "what packages have you qualified for late stage analysis?"
3. We want you to know that you have options when it comes sharing this data. Namely, you could:
   • Choose to be completely anonymous if needed. In this case, your org's name would never be attached to the data you share, nor in any publication. However, you could also elect to remain anonymous and still let the R Validation Hub post the data in one of our public repos.
   • Alternatively, you could choose to publish the data to a GitHub Repo owned by your organization. That way you can maintain a license & disclaimers in the README, clearing your org of any potential or perceived liability. Roche has already taken this approach and serves as an excellent exemplar to follow for other orgs interested in this path.

If you have any follow up questions, please feel to reach out and I'll do my best to provide guidance. Thank you for being a major contributor of the R Validation Hub & R Consortium!

Regards,
Aaron Clark

[aclark02-arcus]

FYI - James got Roche’s validated list of packages open-sourced on Friday. See link below as a good model for other orgs to follow, if they feel so inclined.

https://insightsengineering.github.io/rvalidationhub-packages/

[aclark02-arcus]

on 7/9, @dgkf suggested we spin up a template subpage about how orgs can contribute their data, with the ability to opt out of certain elements, as needed.

[aclark02-arcus]

FYI, still waiting to hear back from several pharmas. @pharmaR/ws-communications, Here is the new and approved script for requesting this info, and inviting orgs to join in to an opportunity to share a Case Studies update:

Hi Nick...

Click to see the rest of the email script

I saw you presented on behalf of JnJ so I thought I'd reach out to see if you'd be interested in participating again. Is it okay if I put you in touch with the team leading the initiative so they can share more info?

Something different this time around is we are hoping to gather list of R pkgs pharma orgs have approved for use on late stage analysis within their GxP environment(s). Initially, we hope to gather this info from the orgs who participate regularly with the R Validation Hub (like JnJ, Roche, Novartis, Merck, Pfizer, Biogen, GSK, etc) to get us started. In the meantime, we'll post an announcement on the pharmar.org site soliciting contributions from any/all orgs who are interested in participating. I'm working on composing that post right now. The hope is that we'll have data gathered for 4 - 5 pharma orgs before our Posit Conf Presentation on Aug 11.

At the end of the day, we hope to:

• analyze the data, then follow up with a blog post to our site (pharmar.org) that summarizes what we found, in aggregate. It's important to note that orgs can choose to remain anonymous or be named in the publication. Either way, we'll make sure we have sufficient participation from the entire industry first, and summarize by org size (small, medium, large).
• share the data with our Regulatory R Repo workstream since knowing which pkgs are generally qualified will greatly help them identify useful benchmarks / thresholds cutoffs when building consensus on measurable quality metrics.

Last, if you interested in participating, we want you to know that you have options when it comes sharing this info. Namely, you could:

• Choose to be completely anonymous. In this case, your org's name would never be attached to the data you share, nor in any publication. However, you could also elect to remain anonymous and still let the R Validation Hub post the data in one of our public repos.
• Alternatively, you could choose to publish the data to a GitHub Repo owned by your organization. That way you can maintain a license & disclaimers in the README, clearing your org of any potential or perceived liability. Roche has already taken this approach and serves as an excellent exemplar to follow for other orgs interested in this path.

If you have any questions, please feel free to pose the question here! But we're asking for a CSV with the following fields:

• package name
• package version
• assessment date
• risk decision (could be "low risk", "medium risk", "high risk" or some alternative, like "approved" for example)
• additional considerations (optional)

For now, we just plan to collect this info once, but we'll see how well it's received by the community and if warranted, consider gathering an update every year, or perhaps every 6 months.

Regards,

I will close this issue once I've heard timeline from each of these orgs, and specifically, whether they can share their list before Posit Conf arrives.

[antalmartinecz]

Hi, A small update on this, I talked with my manager about it and most probably we’d (Certara) be also very happy to provide a list of packages we use. Will have to probably follow up on this a bit more internally to figure out how best to do it: we have our own packages as well (on GitHub) but those are often customizations of existing packages (table1 for example). So will need to track down the base to highlight. Best, Antal

…

On Thu, Jul 18, 2024 at 12:19 Aaron Clark ***@***.***> wrote: FYI, still waiting to hear back from several pharmas. @pharmaR/ws-communications <https://github.com/orgs/pharmaR/teams/ws-communications>, Here is the new and approved script for requesting this info, and inviting orgs to join in to an opportunity to share a Case Studies update: Hi Nick... Click to see the rest of the email script I saw you presented on behalf of JnJ <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWXqfuaxNL8&t=1096s> so I thought I'd reach out to see if you'd be interested in participating again. Is it okay if I put you in touch with the team leading the initiative so they can share more info? Something different this time around is we are hoping to gather list of R pkgs pharma orgs have approved for use on late stage analysis within their GxP environment(s). Initially, we hope to gather this info from the orgs who participate regularly with the R Validation Hub (like JnJ, Roche, Novartis, Merck, Pfizer, Biogen, GSK, etc) to get us started. In the meantime, we'll post an announcement on the pharmar.org site soliciting contributions from any/all orgs who are interested in participating. I'm working on composing that post right now. The hope is that we'll have data gathered for 4 - 5 pharma orgs before our Posit Conf Presentation on Aug 11. At the end of the day, we hope to: - analyze the data, then follow up with a blog post to our site ( pharmar.org) that summarizes what we found, in aggregate. It's important to note that orgs can choose to remain anonymous or be named in the publication. Either way, we'll make sure we have sufficient participation from the entire industry first, and summarize by org size (small, medium, large). - share the data with our Regulatory R Repo <https://github.com/pharmaR/regulatory-r-repo-wg> workstream since knowing which pkgs are generally qualified will greatly help them identify useful benchmarks / thresholds cutoffs when building consensus on measurable quality metrics. Last, if you interested in participating, we want you to know that you have options when it comes sharing this info. Namely, you could: - Choose to be completely anonymous. In this case, your org's name would never be attached to the data you share, nor in any publication. However, you could also elect to remain anonymous and still let the R Validation Hub post the data in one of our public repos. - Alternatively, you could choose to publish the data to a GitHub Repo owned by your organization. That way you can maintain a license & disclaimers in the README, clearing your org of any potential or perceived liability. Roche has already taken this approach <https://insightsengineering.github.io/rvalidationhub-packages/> and serves as an excellent exemplar to follow for other orgs interested in this path. If you have any questions, please feel free to pose the question here! But we're asking for a CSV with the following fields: - package name - package version - assessment date - risk decision (could be "low risk", "medium risk", "high risk" or some alternative, like "approved" for example) - additional considerations (optional) For now, we just plan to collect this info once, but we'll see how well it's received by the community and if warranted, consider gathering an update every year, or perhaps every 6 months. Regards, — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#52 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BCN4SD6C5R4GGNTFJXW74NDZM7TKPAVCNFSM6AAAAABKIEODG6VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDEMZXGAYTGNJQGE> . You are receiving this because you are on a team that was mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[aclark02-arcus]

I talked with my manager about it and most probably we’d (Certara) be also very happy to provide a list of packages we use.

Hi @antalmartinecz, that's great. Does Certara hope to do this like Roche (open source) or more anonymously? Either way, we are thrilled your org is willing to contribute!