In 1990, we initiated a project to design computer systems to follow all diseases, outbreaks, pathogens and drugs. The initial DOS-based program was written in Paradox for floppy disks, later evolving through a compact disk-based program in Windows. A commercial web-based program was eventually released under the name, GIDEON (Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology ON-line, Gideon Informatics, Inc, Los Angeles, California) at http:/ /www.GideonOnline.com. The current version is available on CD (updated every three months) or web subscription (updated every week).