Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2024 Jan;33(1):e5740. doi: 10.1002/pds.5740. Epub 2024 Jan 3.
Transparency and reproducibility are major prerequisites for conducting meaningful real-world evidence (RWE) studies that are fit for decision-making. Many advances have been made in the documentation and reporting of study protocols and results, but the principles for version control and sharing of analytic code in RWE are not yet as established as in other quantitative disciplines like computational biology and health informatics. In this practical tutorial, we aim to give an introduction to distributed version control systems (VCS) tailored toward the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reproducible) implementation of RWE studies. To ease adoption, we provide detailed step-by-step instructions with practical examples on how the Git VCS and R programming language can be implemented into RWE study workflows to facilitate reproducible analyzes. We further discuss and showcase how these tools can be used to track changes, collaborate, disseminate, and archive RWE studies through dedicated project repositories that maintain a complete audit trail of all relevant study documents.
透明度和可重复性是进行有意义的真实世界证据 (RWE) 研究的主要前提条件，这些研究适合决策。在研究方案和结果的记录和报告方面已经取得了许多进展，但在 RWE 中分析代码的版本控制和共享原则尚未像计算生物学和健康信息学等其他定量学科那样得到确立。在本实践教程中，我们旨在介绍针对 RWE 研究的 FAIR（可发现、可访问、可互操作和可重复）实施的分布式版本控制系统 (VCS)。为了便于采用，我们提供了详细的分步说明和实际示例，介绍如何将 Git VCS 和 R 编程语言实施到 RWE 研究工作流程中，以促进可重复的分析。我们还进一步讨论并展示了如何使用这些工具通过专门的项目存储库来跟踪更改、协作、传播和存档 RWE 研究，这些存储库维护所有相关研究文件的完整审计跟踪。
