Case study: tracing ADaM back to SDTM • r4subtrace

Traceability is a filing requirement, but on most studies it lives as a spreadsheet someone maintains by hand. r4subtrace treats it as data instead: it takes your ADaM metadata, your SDTM metadata, and a mapping sheet, builds a graph, and tells you exactly which variables can be traced back to source and which cannot.

This case study uses the example CDISC pilot metadata that ships with r4subdata.

library(r4subtrace)
library(r4subdata)

The inputs

Three tables: what is in ADaM, what is in SDTM, and how the two connect.

head(adam_metadata, 3)
#> # A tibble: 3 × 6
#>   dataset variable label                     type  length format
#>   <chr>   <chr>    <chr>                     <chr>  <int> <chr> 
#> 1 ADSL    STUDYID  Study Identifier          Char      12 NA    
#> 2 ADSL    USUBJID  Unique Subject Identifier Char      20 NA    
#> 3 ADSL    SUBJID   Subject Identifier        Char       8 NA
head(sdtm_metadata, 3)
#> # A tibble: 3 × 6
#>   dataset variable label                     type  length format
#>   <chr>   <chr>    <chr>                     <chr>  <int> <chr> 
#> 1 DM      STUDYID  Study Identifier          Char      12 NA    
#> 2 DM      DOMAIN   Domain Abbreviation       Char       2 NA    
#> 3 DM      USUBJID  Unique Subject Identifier Char      20 NA
head(trace_mapping, 3)
#> # A tibble: 3 × 6
#>   adam_dataset adam_var sdtm_domain sdtm_var derivation_text          confidence
#>   <chr>        <chr>    <chr>       <chr>    <chr>                         <dbl>
#> 1 ADSL         STUDYID  DM          STUDYID  Direct copy from DM.STU…          1
#> 2 ADSL         USUBJID  DM          USUBJID  Direct copy from DM.USU…          1
#> 3 ADSL         SUBJID   DM          SUBJID   Direct copy from DM.SUB…          1

The mapping carries a derivation description and a confidence score for each link, which is what lets the model tell a direct copy apart from a documented derivation.

Building the model

build_trace_model() turns the three tables into nodes and edges, and flags the problems it finds along the way.

tm <- build_trace_model(adam_metadata, sdtm_metadata, mapping = trace_mapping)
tm
#> ℹ Trace Model: 36 ADaM vars, 43 SDTM vars
#> ℹ   Edges: 25, Orphans: 11, Ambiguities: 0

The orphans in that summary are ADaM variables with no mapping row at all. They are the first thing to chase, because an untraceable variable is exactly what a reviewer will stop on.

tm$diagnostics$orphans
#> # A tibble: 11 × 2
#>    adam_dataset adam_var
#>    <chr>        <chr>   
#>  1 ADSL         TRT01P  
#>  2 ADSL         TRT01A  
#>  3 ADSL         SAFFL   
#>  4 ADSL         ITTFL   
#>  5 ADAE         AEREL   
#>  6 ADAE         AESTDTC 
#>  7 ADAE         AEENDTC 
#>  8 ADLB         PARAM   
#>  9 ADLB         AVISIT  
#> 10 ADLB         ABLFL   
#> 11 ADLB         ANL01FL

Trace levels

compute_trace_levels() assigns each ADaM variable a level from L0 (no mapping, no derivation) up to L3 (mapped with high confidence or a documented derivation).

levels <- compute_trace_levels(tm)
table(levels$trace_level)
#> 
#>  1  3 
#> 11 25

That distribution is the honest coverage picture. Variables at L0 or L1 are the gap.

levels[levels$trace_level < 2, c("adam_dataset", "adam_var", "trace_level")]
#> # A tibble: 11 × 3
#>    adam_dataset adam_var trace_level
#>    <chr>        <chr>          <int>
#>  1 ADSL         TRT01P             1
#>  2 ADSL         TRT01A             1
#>  3 ADSL         SAFFL              1
#>  4 ADSL         ITTFL              1
#>  5 ADAE         AEREL              1
#>  6 ADAE         AESTDTC            1
#>  7 ADAE         AEENDTC            1
#>  8 ADLB         PARAM              1
#>  9 ADLB         AVISIT             1
#> 10 ADLB         ABLFL              1
#> 11 ADLB         ANL01FL            1

Coverage as indicators

trace_model_to_evidence() turns the model into R4SUB evidence, and trace_indicator_scores() summarises it into the numbers that feed the Trace pillar of the Submission Confidence Index.

ctx <- r4subcore::r4sub_run_context(study_id = "CDISCPILOT01", environment = "UAT")
#> ℹ Run context created: "R4S-20261025204255-wl4dieex"
ev  <- trace_model_to_evidence(tm, ctx = ctx)
#> ✔ Evidence table created: 47 rows
trace_indicator_scores(ev)
#> # A tibble: 5 × 3
#>   indicator                      value description                              
#>   <chr>                          <dbl> <chr>                                    
#> 1 TRACE_VAR_COVERAGE_L2PLUS      0.694 Proportion of ADaM variables with trace …
#> 2 TRACE_VAR_COVERAGE_L3PLUS      0.694 Proportion of ADaM variables with trace …
#> 3 TRACE_ORPHAN_VAR_COUNT        11     Number of orphan ADaM variables with no …
#> 4 TRACE_AMBIGUOUS_MAPPING_COUNT  0     Number of ADaM variables mapped to multi…
#> 5 TRACE_MEAN_TRACE_LEVEL         2.39  Mean trace level across all ADaM variabl…

Coverage, orphan count, ambiguous mappings, and mean trace level: those are the signals the readiness score reads. Improving them is not a documentation chore done at the end, it is a number the whole team can watch move as the mapping gets completed.