While much software has been written, programs may be excessively costly given the intended use, or may even be unavailable on the user's platform. Programming skills are often required, for instance, even for simple tasks such as computing confidence intervals for count data using standard formulas. EpiTools consists three components. In fact, many of these analyses can be conducted in either R, S, or S-Plus. R is a powerful and versatile program for exploring data and conducting epidemiologic and statistical analyses.
R is also a powerful programming language for creating functions to carry out tailored analyses.
Second, we will compile a library of R functions that were created, developed, and tested for real world problems facing practicing epidemiologists. As EpiTools users become comfortable writing their own R functions, they can contribute their functions to the EpiTools library.