osmapiR
osmapiR is the rare API client that tracks its server's wiki revision numbers in the changelog.
Comparison · Analytics
admiralonco vs RBesT
A side-by-side editorial comparison of admiralonco and RBesT — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:clinical-trials
admiralonco vs RBesT: at a glance
What is admiralonco?
The oncology ADaM helper is dissolving into admiral core, one deprecation at a time.
admiralonco is the oncology companion to admiral, and it ships response-criteria recipes rather than code: RECIST, iRECIST, IMWG, GCIG and PCWG3 each arrive as a vignette plus an ADaM template. Cadence is one or two releases a year, each adding a criteria vignette. The 1.4.0 release began deprecating most of the package's own exported functions in favour of generic admiral equivalents.
What is RBesT?
RBesT is teaching its Bayesian decision rules to answer two-sided questions.
RBesT builds meta-analytic-predictive priors — the machinery for borrowing historical control data into a new trial — and evaluates the operating characteristics of decisions made with them. The stable line has spent several releases on effective sample size: ESS for normal mixtures via a new `family` argument, boundary corrections when no responses or no non-responses are observed, and stabilised ELIR computations. The 1.9-0 release candidate extends the normal, binomial and Poisson outcome functions to two-sided decisions.
admiralonco vs RBesT: editorial side-by-side
admiralonco
0.0ANALYTICS
The oncology ADaM helper is dissolving into admiral core, one deprecation at a time.
◆ Current state
admiralonco is the oncology companion to admiral, and it ships response-criteria recipes rather than code: RECIST, iRECIST, IMWG, GCIG and PCWG3 each arrive as a vignette plus an ADaM template. Cadence is one or two releases a year, each adding a criteria vignette. The 1.4.0 release began deprecating most of the package's own exported functions in favour of generic admiral equivalents.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is converging on a documentation-and-templates model: reusable derivation logic moves upstream into admiral, and admiralonco keeps only the oncology-specific know-how. Every release since 1.0.0 has added a criteria vignette rather than new exported functions, and 1.4.1 extends that by making the template set browsable from the Get Started menu. The surface users program against is shrinking while the guidance they read is growing.
◆ Prediction
Expect the deprecation cycle started in 1.4.0 to advance through its warning and error phases across the next one or two releases, with new work arriving as another response-criteria vignette rather than new functions.
RBesT
0.0ANALYTICS
RBesT is teaching its Bayesian decision rules to answer two-sided questions.
◆ Current state
RBesT builds meta-analytic-predictive priors — the machinery for borrowing historical control data into a new trial — and evaluates the operating characteristics of decisions made with them. The stable line has spent several releases on effective sample size: ESS for normal mixtures via a new `family` argument, boundary corrections when no responses or no non-responses are observed, and stabilised ELIR computations. The 1.9-0 release candidate extends the normal, binomial and Poisson outcome functions to two-sided decisions.
◆ Where it's heading
Two currents run through the changelog. One is ESS hardening — nearly every release since 1.7-4 fixes another edge case where the ELIR calculation aborted or returned something unstable, which is what happens when a quantity used to justify prior strength to regulators gets scrutinised. The other is Stan and brms integration debt: array syntax updates, a minimum Stan version bump, truncated prior generation for `mixstanvar`, deterministic EM. The RC's contributor list shows a second active maintainer, and the work is broader than any recent stable release.
◆ Prediction
The release candidate covers all three outcome families and has already absorbed a round of review comments, so the next step is most likely the 1.9-0 CRAN release itself rather than further feature work.
Alternatives to admiralonco and RBesT
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either admiralonco or RBesT.
ymlthis
ymlthis retired itself, naming Quarto as the reason it no longer needs to exist.
forestly
forestly built an interactive safety review tool, then taught it to produce submission-ready RTF.
pharmaverseadam
pharmaverseadam is the pharmaverse's test-data mirror, and it now covers neurology.
pkglite
pkglite's whole job is knowing which files in an R package are text — and it keeps getting better at guessing.
gMCPLite
gMCPLite exists to be gMCP without Java, and its releases guard that boundary rather than extend it.
See all admiralonco alternatives → · See all RBesT alternatives →
Recent activity from admiralonco and RBesT
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2mo agoadmiraloncoTemplate explorer vignette added to Get Started
- 5mo agoRBesTTwo-sided decisions across normal, binomial and Poisson outcomes ⚡
- 6mo agoadmiraloncoPSA endpoints land as function deprecation begins ⚡
- 11mo agoadmiraloncoPCWG3 response criteria vignette added
- 1y agoRBesTJSON read and write for mixture objects
- 1y agoadmiraloncoGCIG response criteria vignette added
- 1y agoRBesTess() fixed inside apply functions
- 1y agoRBesTESS for normal mixtures in the exponential family
- 1y agoRBesTTruncated mixture priors for brms, plus faster Stan models
- 2y agoadmiraloncoIMWG response criteria vignette added
- 2y agoadmiraloncoiRECIST response criteria vignette added
- 2y agoRBesTStan array syntax update and CRAN system requirements
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between admiralonco and RBesT?
Both compete on the same themes — clinical-trials — within Analytics. admiralonco and RBesT are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is admiralonco better than RBesT?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. admiralonco and RBesT are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to admiralonco?
Top admiralonco alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "admiralonco alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/admiralonco for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to RBesT?
Top RBesT alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "RBesT alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rbest for the full list with editorial commentary on each.