Recent advances in laboratory methods have allowed the use of maturing antibody response to HIV infection to differentiate recent from longstanding infections. Introducing these methods as part of HIV surveillance enables incidence rates to be estimated, allowing real time tracking of the epidemic, development and evaluation of appropriate healthcare interventions, resource planning and allocation. Working with three Eastern and Central European countries, I estimated HIV incidence using an appropriate statistical method, introducing an appropriate test for recent infection, modifying current procedures where required.