Development of J-Assist, a statistical analysis support tool for Julia

Julia is a new programming language that was released in 2012. Similar to Python, in the future, Julia has the potential for use in numerical analysis applications. In this study, we developed a free software named J-Assist that automatically executes statistical analysis operations in Julia version 1.4, which could introduce and popularize Julia among researchers and clinicians in the field of health and medical welfare. J-Assist provides a simple graphical user interface and is easy to install. Through this study, we demonstrate that it is possible to configure a system that automatically executes calculations and scripts in Julia. We compare J-Assist with EZR and Jupyter Notebook. J-Assist can be considered a simpler version of EZR. However, the execution languages used in J-Assist and EZR are different. J-Assist is intended for users who are new to Julia and programming and want to use Julia for quick statistical analysis; by contrast, Jupyter Notebook is suitable for users who want to develop complex programs and perform other complex analyses in Julia. This study also discusses the limitations of the current J-Assist software and functions that might be added to it in the future to expand its applicability for statistical analysis.