Bollettino epidemiologico nazionale

www.epicentro.iss.it

The Laboratory of Epidemiology and Biostatistics of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) has recently opened a web portal known as Epicentro.  The portal is designed to provide easy access to epidemiologic information to those working in Local Health Agencies and Regions in Italy and to provide a means of sharing information and resources between these those working at local and regional level.
Epicentro is targeted at professionals working in prevention units, in public health administration, in regional and provincial health departments, and in epidemiologic observatories.  It is designed to provide access to:

-        Information on the organization of epidemiologic and public health services in Italy at both regional and national level:  what they do, how to contact them, and what documents or information they have available
-        Useful and dynamic data bases, many of which can be used to obtain customized tables useful at local and regional level (census data, hospitalizations, causes of death, infectious diseases, etc).  Regional and international data banks can also be found in Epicentro.
-        The National Epidemiologic Bulletin (BEN)
-        Access the medical literature, including links to journals available on the Internet and to Medline
-        Guidelines, with a link to the National Guidelines Program, which provides national and international guidelines
-        Health topics, which include the major health problems of Italy with a brief note describing the problem, Italian legislation concerning the problem, initiatives of the ISS in the field, and major links on the topic, including surveillance data, information campaigns, graphics, and educational material.  This portion of the site is under development, and the number of topics will increase in the near future.
-        Free software for epidemiology, including Epi-Info (English and Italian versions)
-        On-line training, which contains the best distance-learning programs in epidemiology currently available on the Internet
-        Links with national and international institutions
-        A homepage that is updated weekly with brief messages on health problems in the news, recent epidemiologic research findings, courses, and other material of interest.