Self-service interactive tools such as this have great power to support decisions by policy-makers. Shiny applications are a natural fit for this but it is not always easy to share them due to issues including a lack of server space, highly sensitive data and users who aren’t R-savvy.
One approach to this, and which is used in simple dashboard production, is to use interactive HTML widgets based on embeddable JavaScript visualisation libraries. Interactivity in these instances is, however, limited because selections in one widget do not impact the data presented in another.
This example dashboard was generated to demonstrate one approached to these issues: generation of portable HTML-based Shiny-like dashboards generated using the Crosstalk package within RMarkdown outputs. This approach is based on shared data objects that react to user inputs, altering the content of multiple widgets on the fly, and enable easy sharing with stakeholders or collaborators in the form of a static HTML file that can be explored in any standard web browser.
R v4.2.1 and RStudio 2022.02.4+500 for macOS were used to build this tool
Packages used for dashboard construction:
The data set used was a bulk mRNA-Seq data set generated by the author (Lewis Quayle, PhD) from quiescent and proliferative sub-populations isolated from the oestrogen-receptor positive MCF-7 human breast cancer cell line and published here