Perl-speaks-NONMEM (PsN)--a Perl module for NONMEM related programming

The NONMEM program is the most widely used nonlinear regression software in population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) analyses. In this article we describe a programming library, Perl-speaks-NONMEM (PsN), intended for programmers that aim at using the computational capability of NONMEM in external applications. The library is object oriented and written in the programming language Perl. The classes of the library are built around NONMEM's data, model and output files. The specification of the NONMEM model is easily set or changed through the model and data file classes while the output from a model fit is accessed through the output file class. The classes have methods that help the programmer perform common repetitive tasks, e.g. summarising the output from a NONMEM run, setting the initial estimates of a model based on a previous run or truncating values over a certain threshold in the data file. PsN creates a basis for the development of high-level software using NONMEM as the regression tool.