{clinify}

{clinify} is direct extension of the {flextable} and {officer} packages, aimed at supplementing some functionality and simplifying some common tasks in the creation of clinical tables, listings and figures.

Installation

You can install the development version of {clinify} like so:

install.packages("clinify")

# Install the development version:
devtools::install_github("https://github.com/atorus-research/clinify.git", ref="development")

Motivation

There’s a large assortment of table packages available, and there are many that are specifically catered to clinical reporting. For many organizations, one of these packages may very well be a great choice, but there are a couple of key motivators we’ve found that lead drove us to start writing {clinify}:

• Clinical output standards likely exist within an organization, and changing those standards may not be an option
• It’s very likely that certain outputs will require that you deviate from those standards, so flexibility it necessary, sometimes in highly nuanced ways
• Organizations like Contract Research Organizations (CROs) may have to adapt to multiple clients’ reporting standards, which likely don’t look the same
• Regardless of the situation, reuse and repeatability of a given configuration is critical, and changes in configuration must be easily implemented.

Instead of building a new package from the ground up, {clinify} aims to extend what we see as a best choice for the situation at hand, adding new functionality where necessary and streamlining common tasks to make them more efficient for programmers to implement. We chose {flextable} for a two key reasons:

• {flextable} already offers most of the functionality that we’re looking for, particularly with the pairing of {officer}. For example, word documents have to be a first class priority of output support.
• While creating a table is the focus, the output tends to be more than just a table. We need the capability to modify the underlying document as a whole, which is another place that {officer} is truly necessary.

Design Philosophy

Here are some key principles we’re using in building {clinify}:

• {clinify} objects should inherit from an underlying {flextable} or {officer} object
• {clinify} functionality must not interfere with {flextable} or {officer} functionality, i.e. {flextable} or {officer} functions called should operate without error.

Example

Here’s a basic example of some of clinify’s benefit in action

library(clinify)
# Mock some data
dat <- mtcars
dat['page'] <- c(
  rep(1, 10),
  rep(2, 10),
  rep(3, 10),
  c(4, 4)
)
dat2 <- rbind(dat, dat)
dat2['groups'] <- c(
  rep('a', 32),
  rep('b', 32)
)

# Create a basic table
ct <- clintable(dat2) |> 
  # Break pages by the "page" variable
  clin_page_by('page') |> 
  # Add header lines using the "groups" variable
  clin_group_by('groups') |> 
  # For overflowing columns, alternate pages with 
  # fixed variables for each page
  clin_alt_pages(
    key_cols = c('mpg', 'cyl', 'hp'),
    col_groups = list(
      c('disp', 'drat', 'wt'),
      c('qsec', 'vs', 'am'),
      c('gear', 'carb')
    ) 
  ) |> 
  # Apply column widths as a proportion of the total page
  # For alternating pages, the proportion allocated to key columns
  # is carried to each page group
  clin_col_widths(mpg = .2, cyl=.2, disp=.15, vs=.15) |>
  # Add titles here is using new_header_footer to allow flextable functions
  # to customize the titles block
  clin_add_titles(
    list(
      c("Left", "Center", "Right"),
      c("Just the middle")
    )
  ) |> 
  clin_add_footnotes(
      list(
        c(
          "Here's a footnote.", 
          format(Sys.time(), "%H:%M %A, %B %d, %Y")
        )
      )
    )  

# Print pages (by default 3 pages) to the viewer of the IDE
print(ct)

Built of {flextable} and {officer}, you can then write the table out to a docx file.

# Write the table out to docx
write_clintable(ct, "demo_table.docx")