An open source statistical web application for validation and analysis of virtual cohorts

TL;DR

A new open-source web tool helps validate and analyze virtual medical cohorts using statistical methods, aiming to improve clinical research efficiency.

Contribution

The novel contribution is an open-source, user-friendly web application for validating virtual cohorts and in-silico trials.

Findings

The tool provides a statistical environment for comparing virtual cohorts with real datasets.

It is fully open, generic, and menu-driven with user guidance features.

The application has been tested and validated according to user requirements.

Abstract

The conventional approach to developing medical treatments and medical devices usually covers pre-clinical and in-vitro investigations, in-vivo animal studies and clinical trials with humans. In-silico trials and virtual cohorts present a promising avenue for addressing the challenges inherent in clinical research and improving its efficiency. Despite considerable advancements in the field of in-silico trials, several notable gaps and challenges still need to be addressed, one is the limited availability of open and user-friendly statistical tools to support the specific analysis of virtual cohorts and in-silico trials. In the EU-Horizon funded project SIMCor we have developed a web application, providing a R-statistical environment supporting the validation of virtual cohorts and the application of validated cohorts for in-silico trials. It provides a practical platform for validating cohorts and has implemented existing statistical techniques that can be applied to compare virtual cohorts with real datasets. It is fully open, generic and menu driven and provides user guidance and help (https://github.com/ecrin-github/SIMCor, https://zenodo.org/records/14718597).The tool has been developed according to specified user requirements and has been extensively tested and validated. Important next steps are to gain more experience with the tool in other domains and research environments and to extend its functionality.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-025-99720-3.

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