Mapping the Latin American Pharmaceutical Landscape: Advanced Table Design with gt

My submission to the 2025 Table Contest

2025-table-contest
tables
R
gt
Quarto
Author

Lukman Jibril Aliyu

Published

October 17, 2025

đź“Š Full Description

Overview

This submission explores how advanced table design can make complex pharmaceutical data both accessible and visually compelling. Using open-source data from the sydmizar/drugs-datasets repository, I analyzed over 28,000 unique drug preparations across Latin America, classified under the World Health Organization’s Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) system. The project demonstrates the creative and analytical potential of the gt package for building beautiful, information-rich tables in R.

đź”— Repository: lukmanaj/latam-pharma-atc-analysis

What This Submission Demonstrates

This project bridges data analysis and data presentation, showing how thoughtful table design can tell a clear story about the pharmaceutical landscape in Latin America.

Key contributions include:

1. Data Storytelling

  • Progressive structure from overview → detail → comparison.
  • Inline insights summarizing concentration and diversity of drug formulations.
  • Designed for multiple audiences: policymakers, researchers, and data enthusiasts.

2. Technical Craftsmanship

  • Built entirely in R + Quarto using the gt package.
  • Enhanced readability through column spanners, semantic color scales, and footnotes.
  • Balanced typography, spacing, and annotations for professional polish.

3. Table Design Innovation

  • Main Summary Table: Heat-mapped metrics with contextual spanners and top-category highlights.
  • Detailed Breakdown Table: Row-grouped structure revealing leading ATC classes within each major category.
  • Visual Ranking Table: Embedded HTML progress bars for intuitive comparison and podium-style highlighting.

Analytical Insights

The analysis uncovered striking therapeutic trends:

  • Market Concentration: Over half of all preparations fall under the top three therapeutic categories—nervous system, cardiovascular, and metabolic drugs.
  • Diversity vs. Specialization: Categories like dermatologicals and antiinfectives exhibit higher formulation diversity, while others are highly specialized.
  • Public Health Context: The observed concentration suggests both opportunities and challenges in access, regulation, and health system resilience.

Design Principles

The submission embodies five core principles of effective table design:

  1. Progressive Disclosure: Reveal complexity gradually—from macro to micro views.
  2. Visual Hierarchy: Guide the reader’s attention using thoughtful alignment, color, and emphasis.
  3. Contextual Enrichment: Add footnotes and explanatory notes to clarify metrics.
  4. Reproducibility: Ensure the entire analysis can be rerun end-to-end using open data.
  5. Accessibility: Prioritize legibility through logical structure and descriptive labeling.

Novel Elements

  • Formulation Diversity Metric: Introduces a new ratio—preparations per ATC class—as a measure of market variety.
  • Podium Highlighting: Subtle gold/silver/bronze styling for top three categories.
  • Gradient Color Encoding: Multi-scale palette differentiation between volume and diversity.
  • Embedded Progress Bars: Dynamic inline HTML elements for visual clarity.

Why It Matters

This project isn’t just about making a pretty table, it’s about making data meaningful. By connecting open pharmaceutical data with modern presentation tools, it highlights the potential of reproducible, visually literate analytics in public health and data science.

The approach encourages:

  • Transparency in analysis pipelines.
  • Accessibility of insights to non-technical readers.
  • Inspiration for others to push the creative boundaries of gt and Quarto.

Audience and Use Cases

  • Regulators: To understand therapeutic concentration and market diversity.
  • Healthcare Organizations: For planning formularies and supply chain priorities.
  • Researchers: To study pharmaceutical access, equity, and therapeutic trends.
  • Data Scientists: To learn advanced gt table design techniques.

Reproducibility and Open Science

All data sources, code, and outputs are open and version-controlled. The GitHub repository includes:

  • Full Quarto document (.qmd) with code folding and commentary.
  • Raw CSV data pulled from public GitHub repositories.
  • Rendered HTML output showcasing all tables.

Acknowledgments

This project builds on the incredible work of the R and Posit communities, particularly the authors and contributors behind the gt package and the Great Tables initiative. Their focus on clarity, design, and reproducibility continues to inspire creative, data-driven storytelling.

Contest Metadata

Contest: 2025 Table Contest Created with: Quarto · gt · R Author: Lukman Jibril Aliyu Repository: github.com/lukmanaj/latam-pharma-atc-analysis