R Epidemics Consortium (original) (raw)

The R Epidemics Consortium (RECON) is an international not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation gathering experts in data science, modelling methodology, public health, and software development to create the next generation of analytics tools for informing the response to disease outbreaks, health emergencies and humanitarian crises, using the R software and other free, open-source resources.

This includes packages specifically designed for handling, visualising, and analysing outbreak data using cutting-edge statistical methods, as well as more general-purpose tools for data cleaning, versioning, and encryption, and system infrastructure.

Our packages must fulfil three key aspects:

• Efficiency: our tools can be used in real time to improve situation awareness and inform intervention strategies.
• Reliability: our tools are thoroughly and constantly tested using professional software development methods.
• Accessibility: our tools are free, open-source, and available on virtually any platform; they can be used with different levels of expertise, and aim to provide graphical user interfaces implementing the most important functionalities.

Besides its active involvement in the creation of tools, RECON is also increasingly dedicated to:

• disseminating knowledge: RECON provides free, open-access training material on its training platform reconlearn.org, and regularly organises workshops and short courses on outbreak analytics and data science. Our public forum , freely accessible to anyone, is dedicated to sharing exptertise on these topics.
• outbreak response deployment: RECON supports the deployment of data analytics resources to the field as part of the response to health emergencies; this includes the deployment of staff as well as analysis systems adapted to low resources settings.

As of 19th September 2018, RECON is registered as a not-for-profit,incorporated association regulated by the French law (registration number W751246083), in accordance to the association law of 1st July 1901 and the decree of the 16th August 1901. For more information about the remit of RECON, check our current official statutes in English; original statutes used to create the organisation are also available inFrench.