Material for the ISPOR Workshop "R Shiny for HTA" - 1 December 2021
Paul Schneider1,2, Gianluca Baio4, Rose Hart3, Robert Smith1,2,3
1University of Sheffield; 2Dark Peak Analytics, 3UK Health Security Agency (DHSC); 4UCL; 5BresMed
To introduce participants to R Shiny user interfaces and demonstrate how they can be used to make health economic decision models more accessible to stakeholders.
As health economic decision models become more computationally burdensome, the shortcomings of Microsoft Excel are becoming increasingly apparent. As a result, high level programming languages such as R are becoming more popular. The script-based nature of these languages may be perceived as lacking an accessible interface, limiting the extent to which stakeholders, who are not modellers, can engage with economic models. The R package ‘shiny’ provides an attractive solution: it allows the creation of easy-to-use web interfaces, which allow decision makers to directly interact with the decision model. Users can easily input their own assumptions and explore completely new scenarios in real-time. The underlying R code can be submitted alongside the interface to be reviewed and transparently debugged. In the future, R Shiny user interfaces could complement HTA submissions and improve health policy decision making.
- Introduction to R and Shiny in HTA: current situation and future potential (Gianluca Baio)
- Interactive coding tutorial: building a simple Shiny app for a Markov model in R (Robert Smith)
- Tips for using R Shiny in practice for efficient scalability and multi-team projects (Rose Hart)
- Open questions and discussion
Slides:
- Gianluca Baio: Introduction to R and Shiny in HTA
- Robert Smith: Tutorial
- Rose Hart: Tips for using R Shiny in practice
Building a simple shiny app:
- App: https://robertasmith.shinyapps.io/sick_sicker/
- Paper: https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-69
- Code: https://github.com/RobertASmith/paper_makeHEshiny
More advanced materials: