Working Group on Data Exchange in Medicolegal Death Investigation

• NCJ Number: 305760
• Date Published: 2022
• Grant Number(s): 2016-MU-BX-K110
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)

Annotation

This webpage provides background on the Medicolegal Death Investigation Data Exchange Working Group, including a list of participants, products, and related resources.

Abstract

This introduction to the Medicolegal Death Investigation Data Exchange Working Group (MDI-Data-WG) provides a list of WG subcommittees, goals, and participants. The MDI-Data-WG includes a diverse gathering of medicolegal death investigation and other ancillary professionals working to document and provide recommendations that will enhance data exchange and collection in death investigations across the US, by collecting insights from medical examiners, coroners, forensic investigators, epidemiologists, public health analysts, researchers, crime laboratory directors, law enforcement, federal agencies, toxicologists, and forensic pathologists acting as members, observers, and facilitators. Specific emphasis is placed on three subcommittees: Commonly Exchanged Data for Death Investigations; Drug Taxonomy; and Forensic Science Data Integration. The goals of the MDI-Data-WG include: to document the types of data that are commonly exchanged with public health and public safety partners and determine collective usage points; to provide suggestions on how to improve the naming process for emerging drugs; to guide the drug mapping/classification process; and to recommend needed enhancements to the operation of exchanging forensic data with other organizations.