The National Coroners Information System: Contributing to Death and Injury Prevention.

Introduction The NCIS is a world-first electronic national database of coronial information from all Australian states and territories dating back to 1 July 2000, with the exception of Queensland data, which commences from 1 January 2001. As a collection of information about all deaths reported to a coroner, the NCIS assists death investigators, government agencies and researchers around Australia in obtaining more timely and efficient access to national coronial data and contributes to a reduction in preventable death and injury in Australia. Prior to the inception of the NCIS, Australia’s eight coronial jurisdictions each had their own systems of data collection and storage; in some jurisdictions, this involved a manual filing system. The coroners’ ability to identify trends on a national basis was hampered by the lack of the means to systematically identify and retrieve clusters of similar cases. By May 2007 over 127,000 cases were available on the NCIS. This represents over six years of data on deaths that have been reported to coroners’ offices around Australia since implementation of the NCIS.