Using Shiny apps for statistical analyses and laboratory workflows

Abstract

In many areas of healthcare, digitization has progressed only slowly so far. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in particular has shown how valuable software solutions that are deployable at short notice, can be. In this review we present some selected possibilities of the easy-to-learn programming language R and demonstrate potential applications of the package Shiny in the fields of statistical analysis and laboratory medicine. In addition to a brief tabular overview of published applications, we present two examples of their use in routine laboratory workflows. The first example demonstrates how a Shiny app can be used to estimate the minimal difference (MD) of laboratory analytes, while the second example illustrates how pre- and post-analytical processing steps can be integrated into a fully automated workflow using R and the Shiny package.

Keywords

• digitization
• r
• shiny
• statistical analysis