exmort exmort hex logo showing observed deaths above an expected baseline

All-Cause and Excess Mortality Calculator — an R Shiny application for estimating all-cause mortality and excess mortality from country-level weekly or monthly death counts, developed at the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific (WPRO).

You supply observed deaths and an event calendar (e.g. COVID-19 waves, typhoons). The app fits one or more statistical baseline models using periods outside the supplied events, estimates expected deaths across the observed series, and reports excess deaths, P-scores and confidence limits with tables, plots and downloadable reports.

Baseline models included:

Documentation: https://shanlong-who.github.io/exmort/

The GitHub development version also supports selecting one country and one cause of death from a monthly workbook. It includes official Australian (2015-May 2026) and Philippine (2019-2024) examples, a cause-specific template, and separate historical-average and negative-binomial baselines. The seven all-cause models and Best Fit remain available. See the cause-specific guide for use and data limitations. The Philippine example compares 2024 with pandemic-inclusive 2019-2023 history; it is not a pre-pandemic counterfactual. These additions are not yet on CRAN.

Guides

Guide What you will learn
Getting started Install the package, run a built-in example and export a report
Preparing data Fill the weekly or monthly workbook and define the event calendar
Models and interpretation Compare baselines, read uncertainty and explain excess deaths and P-scores

The website contains documentation. Launch the Shiny calculator from R to perform an analysis.

Installation

Install from CRAN:

install.packages("exmort")

Development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("remotes")
# remotes::install_github("shanlong-who/exmort")
install.packages("exmort", repos = c('https://shanlong-who.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org'))

Usage

library(exmort)
run_app()

The app opens in your default web browser and runs entirely on your machine — no data leaves your computer. Built-in example datasets for several countries are included; you can also upload your own workbook using the templates on the Data tab.

Start with Data → Upload Data → Built-in example data, select a country and its mortality and event sheets, then click Merge Built-in Data. Review View Data, open Model, choose a group and click Run Model. Inspect Tables and Plots before generating an HTML report.

The current models use periods outside the supplied events (event_index == "0") as their baseline. These may include observations after an event; review the input time range and event calendar carefully.

Use RStudio's Stop button or Escape in the console to stop the app.

Optional features

License

GPL-3. © World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific.