EPIDEMIOLOGY TOOLS PROGRAM AND SELECTED MEDICAL APPLICATIONS

In epidemiological research the calculation of appropriate measures of disease frequency is the basis for a comparison of populations and, t herefore, the identification of disease determinants. Two frequencies being compared can be combined into a single summary parameter that es timates the association between an exposure and a disease. This can be accomplished by calculating either the ratio of the measures of disea se frequency for two populations which indicates how much more likely one population is to develop a disease than another, or the difference between the frequencies which indicates how much greater the frequenc y of a disease is in one population compared with the other. In epidem iology we often need to compute measures of disease frequency mentione d above. We can do that by means of complex statistical software, but sometimes it is not easy or possible to use this software for an analy sis of epidemiological data. At the EuroMISE Center of Charles Univers ity and Academy of Sciences in the framework of the research supported from grant COPERNICUS JRP-10053 the E.T. program (Epidemiology Tools) was developed. This program can be used for practical analysis of dat a from retrospective (case-control) studies or prospective (cohort) st udies and for standardization. However, the program can be also a usef ul teaching tool in the epidemiology courses. (C) 1997 Elsevier Scienc e Ireland Ltd.