R Package for Epidemiologic Data and Graphics

Overview

Available from: http://cran.r-project.org/

Package page: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/epitools/index.html

Our mission is to make the numerical tools and methods of epidemiology freely available on the World Wide Web. Our primary audience is public health epidemiologists and data analysts. Using R, an open source programming language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, we provide numerical tools and programming solutions that have been used and tested in real-world epidemiologic applications.

Many practical problems in the analysis of public health data require programming or special software, and investigators in different locations may duplicate programming efforts. Often, simple analyses, such as the construction of confidence intervals, are not calculated and thereby complicate appropriate statistical inferences for small geographic areas. There are many examples of simple and useful numerical tools that would enhance the work of epidemiologists at local health departments and yet are not readily available for the problem in front of them (e.g., exact confidence intervals for low incidence rates, lifetime risk calculations, etc.). The availability of these tools will encourage wider use of appropriate methods and promote evidence-based public health practices.

Recommended links

Selected Epidemiology R packages

• Epi (Denmark)
• EpiBasix (Canada)
• EpiCalc (Thailand)
• EpiR (New Zealand)

Selected R packages useful for epidemiology

• Rcmdr (Basic statistics GUI for R)
• meta (Meta-analysis)
• survey (Complex survey analysis)
• survival (Survival analysis)

Selected public health epidemiology sites

• Brixton Health (U.K.)
• EpiData (Denmark)
• OpenEpi (U.S.A.)