Accurate and timely reporting of adverse events (AEs) in clinical trials is crucial to ensuring data integrity and patient safety. However, AE under-reporting remains a challenge, often highlighted in Good Clinical Practice (GCP) audits and inspections. Traditional detection methods, such as on-site investigator audits via manual source data verification (SDV), have limitations. Addressing this, the open-source R package {simaerep} was developed to facilitate rapid, comprehensive, and near-real-time detection of AE under-reporting at each clinical trial site. In the v0.5.0 update released in early 2024, the package was updated to also detect over-reporting. This package leverages patient-level AE and visit data for its analyses. The open-source package can be embedded into audits to enable fast, holistic, and repeatable quality oversight of clinical trials. With the v0.6.0 update in late 2024, the package also supports in-database processing, enabling seamless scaling with enterprise IT infrastructure. The statistical probability of a site under-reporting adverse events can be used to manage, target and focus quality assurance activities.
{simaerep} is available publicly on github (https://openpharma.github.io/simaerep/). It follows general good practices and standards for R packages and has a high unit test coverage which is tested by an automated pipeline which creates a validation report that is attached to the latest release.
To learn more, go to the following resources:
- Links to the Code repository and documentation.
- 2024 Articles on V.0.6.0 with in-frame version and V0.5.0 with over-reporting update.
- Article on validation in Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science.
- News article with company testimonials.
- View the November 9, 2023 Demonstration Webinar or access the slide presentation.