Thank you for your interest in Epicollect5 and its development journey.
Epicollect originated as a prototype developed at Imperial College London, initially as Epicollect, then Epicollect+, with the aim of supporting data collection in infectious disease and epidemiological research. Over time, the team transitioned to the Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance (CGPS) at the University of Oxford, where Epicollect5 was developed as a complete rewrite from the ground up. This new version was built by a dedicated team who carefully considered the limitations and lessons from previous versions to deliver a more robust and scalable platform.
While Epicollect5 was originally created to support infectious disease surveillance, its general-purpose design and ease of use have enabled much broader adoption across disciplines such as conservation, education, and social sciences.
Although we did not follow a formal co-creation framework, user feedback—particularly from researchers and field teams—has played a significant role in shaping the platform. Key features are often guided or refined based on the needs of CGPS-led projects, but we also actively consider suggestions from our wider user community. The platform’s flexibility is a direct result of this iterative and user-informed development process.
For more background on the earlier versions of Epicollect, you may find these publications helpful:
We also recently started collecting news and articles about Epicollect5 and we list them on our User Guide →