R/Pharma
R/Pharma is a scientifically & industry oriented, collegial online conference focused on the use of R in the development of pharmaceuticals, with breakout in-person and APAC satellite events.
Our mission:
- Promote the use of open source, and collaboration between companies
- Put on fantastic, vendor free, community events like R/Pharma, R/Pharma APAC and R/Pharma Summit
- Encourage seminars, discussion and facilitate collaboration between companies
Our impact
Latest Announcement
R/Pharma 2025 recordings are now available on our YouTube channel. Workshops will be available in January.
R/Pharma will return in 2026 with several events. Please check the R/Pharma website or LinkedIn page.
R/Pharma
The first conference took place in 2018, as an in-person event hosted by Harvard. During Covid-19, the conference moved to be online, and grew in participation to more than 2,600 data scientists from the pharma world with a passion for using R.
The conference is free to attend, and all hosting costs are met by contributions by Pharma companies.
R/Pharma Summit
The R/Pharma summit has run for three years at posit::conf. In 2025, over 100 representatives from 40+ companies met in-person to discuss some of the most pressing topics pharma is tackling. The in-person summit focuses on the future of drug development using open source and tailored for program leaders and people leading Open Source initiatives. A summary of prior years is here: Summit page.
Throughout the 2025 R/Pharma Summit, facilitators fostered in-person discussions and conversations about key items (reproducibility, interactivity, submissions, scalability, etc.) with industry leaders about open-source tools for next-generation submissions. The advisory board, shaping the agenda and planned actions for the event, is made up of more than 10 pharma companies as well as CROs and academic research centers.
Community
Diversity Alliance
We aspire to be an inclusive R community for developers who work in the pharma space. Our goal is to provide a welcoming, equitable and supportive space for people to upskill, share knowledge and build a community of diverse voices. The R/Pharma Diversity Alliance is a space where all ways of being and doing can feel welcome. Each year, the Diversity Alliance put on a hackathon to introduce new voices to open source R package development. For more details subscribe to our meeting calendar or email us at diversityalliance@opensourceinpharma.com.
R/Pharma Hangouts
The monthly R/Pharma hangout is a place to discuss all things open source. The hangouts are hosted by Eric Nantz and Jared Woolfolk and are never recorded so you can be yourself! For more details, subscribe to our meeting calendar.
Proceedings
R/Pharma curates proceedings from previous conferences on this site, and on YouTube. You can find information on previous talks and workshops on the events page.