[R-sig-Epi] Epidemiology Task View

[Neil Shephard]

Thanks to all who have responded both on the list and directly.

It seems that an Epidemiology Task View would be useful and a number
of suggestions have already been made.  Incorporating and expanding on
this I now have the following categories with suggested packages...

Case-Control : Epi, epiR epibasic, epicalc, epitools
Cohort : Epi epiR, epibasic epicalc epitools
Incidence/Mortality :
Demography : demogR

Additional Sections (Bendix Carstensen & Bernardo Rangel Tura)

Multistate Models : msm, MSsim() function in Epi  (BC)
Survival : Refer to Survival Task View (BC)
Design of Studies : clinfun, PwrGSD , crossdes, Design (BRT)
Diagnosis : DiagnosisMed (BRT)
Clinical Trials : clinfun (BRT)
Epidemiologic Surveillance (BRT)
Meta-analysis : rmeta (BRT)
GIS/geographical mapping : r-spatial (http://r-spatial.sourceforge.net/) (NS)

Additional Packages (Bernardo Rangel Tura) not sure which sections these fit in
rhosp: Side effect risks in hospital : simulation and estimation
catmap: Case-control And Tdt Meta-Analysis Package  (is this used in
epidemiology?  I'd have used in statistical genetics/genetic
epidemiology, and its already in the Genetics Task View  but does it
have a wider application I'm unaware of?)
pARccs: Estimation of partial attributable risks (PAR) from case-control data
GroupSeq: Performing computations related to group sequential designs
BayHaz: R Functions for Bayesian Hazard Rate Estimation


One difference from the Genetics Task View which generally describes
which packages to use for a given area is that many of the
Epidemiological packages have funcitons that cover several of the
suggested sections (i.e. Epi/epiR/epibasic/epicalc/epitools span
several sections).  Thus I feel that it would be useful to mention
which functions within a given package are useful for a particular
task.

Clearly there are more packages than I'm familiar with, but I can read
the package descriptions to find out whats what and which functions
are available for each area.

I'll have a go at knocking up a draft document over the coming weeks
and will post a copy to the list when I've got something worth
distributing.  No time frame I'm afraid (yet).  Any more input is of
course more than welcome.

Thanks for the encouragement,

Neil
-- 
"We should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler."  -
Anon (not Albert Einstein)

Email - nshephard at gmail.com
Website - http://slack.ser.man.ac.uk/
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