NetEpi

Free, open source, network-enabled tools for epidemiology and public health practice

Public health is an area of endeavour concerned with protecting and improving the health of sub-groups of the population (or the entire population), rather than with the care of individual patients.

Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations, and serves as the foundation of almost all public health health practice.

NetEpi, which is short for "InterNet-enabled Epidemiology", is a collaborative project to create a suite of free, open source software tools for epidemiology and public health practice which make full use of the Internet. Anyone with an interest in population health epidemiology or public health informatics is encouraged to examine the current suite of tools and to contribute to their further development. Contributions which involve formal and/or informal testing of the tools in a wide range of circumstances and environments are particularly welcome, as are offers of assistance with design, programming and documentation tasks. We are also happy to talk to potential sponsors of the NetEpi projects.

There are currently two main tools in the NetEpi suite of applications:

NetEpi Collection (formerly known as NetEpi Case Manager), is a free, open-source, Web-based outbreak data management tool, written in Python and which uses only open-source software components and infrastructure, including the PostgreSQL database. Development commenced in 2003 during the global SARS epidemic and has contuinued episodically since then. Version 1.0, suitable for production use, was released in July 2007. In many respects, it is rather like the popular Epi Info tool provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but for the World Wide Web, and not just for computers running Microsoft MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows operating systems. NetEpi Collection also incorporates distributed task management functions needed to deal with large public health emergencies such as a human influenza pandemic.

NetEpi Analysis is a tool for interactive exploratory data analysis of large population health (and possibly clinical) data sets - "large" meaning in the range of 10 to 100 million records, although it also works well with smaller data sets, of course. This tool is also written primarily in Python and also makes use of Numeric Python (NumPy) and the open-source R statistical environment. NetEpi Analysis is also available under an open source license. It uses a simple but somewhat novel approach to data filtering, reduction and summarisation, involving an object-oriented implementation of fast set operations on sorted inverse ordinal mappings of vertically-disaggregated dataset columns (described in a paper which is available on request from its author). Both Web browser and programmatic interfaces are provided.

If you would like to contribute to NetEpi development or to monitor the progress of the project, please join the NetEpi-discuss mailing list by visiting the mailing list subscription Web page.

• Other information on the NetEpi initiative
• Some screenshots
• Documentation
• Downloads

Other open source and no-cost software for epidemiology and public health

Open source epidemiological and public health software
Software for which the source code is available under a license which permits inspection, modification and redistribution.

• OpenEpi - an epidemiological calculator which runs in your Web browser, similar in concept to (but more comprehensive than) the StatCalc facility in Epi Info.
• EpiTools - a collection of epidemiological functions for the (free, open source) R statistical computing environment.
• EpiCentre Epi package for R - another collection of epidemiological functions for the R statistical computing environment, suitable for use in both veterinary and human epidemiology.
• Lexis - a prototype package of epidemiological functions for R, with special features for age-period-cohort models.
• sampsize - a sample size calculator
• PHIELD (Public Health Integration & Exchange of Lab Data) - a system for filtering and re-formatting laboratory information system data prior to delivery to public health agencies.
• OpenRODS - real-time outbreak and disease surveillance software.

No-cost epidemiological and public health software
Software which is available at no cost, but without the immense benefit of an open-source license which permits source code to be inspected, modified and redistributed.

• Epidata - programmes for data entry, data documentation and exploratory analysis, for computers which use Microsoft Windows. The EpiData programmes and manuals are available in several languages.
• Epi Info - the very well-known suite of programmes for data entry, analysis and reporting, with a history stretching back to the early 1980s, published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Available in versions for both MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, and in several languages. CDC does not make the source code for Epi Info available to anyone for download, although it may be possible to request access to it under the provisions of US Freedom of Information or other legislation.
• Brixton Health epidemiological software collection - a range of tools written or made available by Mark Myatt.

NetEpi project files are hosted by .
The appearance of advertisements of products or services on the NetEpi project pages hosted by SourceForge does not imply the endorsement or recommendation of those products or services by any of the people or organisations associated with the NetEpi project.