Manual by Andrew G. Dean, Juan Carlos Zubieta, and Kevin M. Sullivan, and Cecile Delhumeau.

Small corrections were made on November 30, 2000.

Epi Info is a series of programs for Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT, and 2000 for use by public health professionals in conducting outbreak investigations, managing databases for public health surveillance and other tasks, and general database and statistics applications. With Epi Info and a personal computer, physicians, epidemiologists, and other public health and medical workers can rapidly develop a questionnaire or form, customize the data entry process, and enter and analyze data.

Epidemiologic statistics, graphs, and tables are produced with simple commands like READ, FREQ, LIST, TABLES, and GRAPH. A component called Epi Map displays geographic maps with data from Epi Info. Epi Info is in the public domain and can be downloaded from the Internet. CD-ROM copies and printed manuals are expected to be available from private vendors.

The first version of Epi Info was released in 1985. A study in 1997 documented 145,000 copies of the DOS versions of Epi Info and Epi Map in 117 countries. The DOS manual and/or programs have been translated into 13 non-English languages.

Epi Info 2000 is an entirely new series of programs for Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT, and 2000, written in Visual Basic, Version 6. It uses the Microsoft Access file format as a gateway to industry database standards. Although Epi Info 2000 data is stored in Microsoft Access files for maximum compatibility with other systems, many other file types can be analyzed, imported, or exported.

Epi Info 2000 includes a Geographic Information System (GIS), called Epi Map 2000, built around the MapObjects program from Environmental Systems Research, Inc. (ESRI), the producers of ArcView. Epi Map is compatible with GIS data from numerous Internet sites in the popular ESRI formats.

Epi Info 2000 retains many features of the familiar Epi Info for DOS, while offering Windows strengths like point-and-click ease of use, graphics, fonts, and painless printing. The programs, documentation, and teaching materials are in the public domain (although “Epi Info” is a CDC trademark), and may be freely copied, distributed, or translated.

Suggested citation: Dean AG, Arner TG, Sangam S, Sunki GG, Friedman R, Lantinga M, Zubieta JC, Sullivan KM, Smith DC. Epi Info 2000, a database and statistics program for public health professionals for use on Windows 95, 98, NT, and 2000 computers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2000.

Stephen B. Thacker CDC Library collection