the DALY Calculator
a generic tool for stochastic DALY calculation in R

DALY Calculator development team


The DALY Calculator is developed and maintained by Brecht Devleesschauwer, with contributions from Scott McDonald, Juanita Haagsma, Nicolas Praet, Arie Havelaar and Niko Speybroeck.


Version history

Version 1.3.0 — 10/05/2014   (latest release)

New features
  • Introduction of a DALY_list() function to combine different 'DALY' objects;
  • Introduction of a plot() method for objects of class 'DALY' and 'DALY_list';
  • Introduction of a scatterplot() method for objects of class 'DALY' and 'DALY_list';
  • Introduction of a print() and plot() method for objects of class 'DALY_sensitivity'.
Performance improvements
  • Function sensitivity() has been updated to allow calculating (standardized) regression coefficients and partial correlation coefficients, either on the original or the ranked input values.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed mismatch between Authors@R and Author fields in DESCRIPTION file;
  • The use of extern "C" {} in the DALY.cpp file has been revised to fix issues with clang.

Version 1.2.0 — 06/07/2013

New features
  • Introduction of a sensitivity() function;
  • Function getDALY() gains arguments aw and dr.
Performance improvements
  • The DALY Calculator output now also includes the simulated values from the input distributions;
  • Several functions have been updated to make proper use of the match.arg() functionality;
  • The 'DALY' database on the search path is replaced by a '.DALYenv' environment in the DALY package.
Bug fixes
  • The readDALYdata() function now correctly reads .RData files when specified through the file argument;
  • All instances of INC and MRT have now consistently been renamed to cases and deaths, respectively;
  • The DALY Calculator manual has been rebuilt to fix issues with pdffonts.

Version 1.1.0 — 28/08/2012

New features
  • Introduction of an aggregate() method for objects of class 'DALY'.
Performance improvements
  • Each window has a "save or cancel" policy;
  • The basic DALY Calculator output consists of simulated DALYs, YLLs, YLDs, incident cases and deaths per outcome and per age/sex class;
  • print(), summary() and hist() methods have been updated;
  • Saving and loading data is implemented through .RData files instead of .txt files.
Deprecated and defunct
  • Text files with input data can no longer be read by the DALY Calculator;
  • As a result, the DALY Calculator Excel template is defunct.
Installation
  • DALY 1.1.0 can be installed and run under Mac OS X, Linux and Windows operating systems. The DALY Calculator is only launched after attaching the package in an interactive session, which means that the package can be installed without having the required tools installed. Loading the package under Mac OS X and Linux requires the prior installation of the X Window System (X11) and the Tcl/Tk toolkit.
Bug fixes
  • Global variables removed; all variables needed by the DALY Calculator are stored in a separate 'DALY' database;
  • Welcome messages implemented through packageStartupMessage();
  • Problems with installation of BWidget resolved by replacing tkwidget(parent, type = "ComboBox", ...) by ttkcombobox();
  • set.seed() can be used to select the seed used for the random number generation processes within the DALY Calculator;
  • A same window can be opened only once; calling a window opening function while the corresponding window is already opened will return focus to the existing window;
  • Evaluation of input data improved by using regular expressions;
  • Empty cells in the 'Life Expectancy' window produce an error message, while they are still allowed in other windows;
  • 'Iterations' can only be set to a strictly positive integer value;
  • On closing the DALY Calculator main window, all other DALY Calculator windows will close as well;
  • Checkboxes may also be set by clicking the corresponding text.

Version 1.0.0 — 23/03/2011

Features
  • Calculate DALYs, YLDs, YLLs and Deaths for a simple incidence-based disease model;
  • Able to include up to eight outcomes;
  • Five age-groups included, i.e., 0-4; 5-14; 15-44; 45-59; 60+;
  • Life expectancy table can be defined by user; standard table is the Coale and Demeny model life-table West, level 26 and 25;
  • Two examples included, i.e., Neurocysticercosis in Cameroon and Toxoplasmosis in the Netherlands;
  • Saving/loading data through .txt file;
  • The basic DALY Calculator output consists of simulated DALYs, YLLs, YLDs and deaths per outcome, aggregated over age/sex classes;
  • print(), summary() and hist() methods for objects returned by the DALY Calculator.

Version 0.0.0

A first version of the DALY Calculator was developed in November 2010, but was never released. This version consisted of a single 'data' window, and was only able to reproduce the Neurocysticercosis example.