Our Foren­sic Med­i­cine (FM) ser­vice con­ducts around 6,000 coro­nial post-mortem exam­i­na­tions for the NSW Coro­ner each year to inves­ti­gate unex­plained or unex­pect­ed deaths. These exam­i­na­tions are car­ried out by spe­cial­ist teams, includ­ing foren­sic pathol­o­gists and foren­sic mor­tu­ary tech­ni­cians, at three ded­i­cat­ed FM facil­i­ties in Lid­combe, New­cas­tle and Wollongong.

FM teams had pre­vi­ous­ly been work­ing with three sep­a­rate dat­ed sys­tems and large­ly paper-based work­flows to man­age each case. Police refer­rals and coro­nial direc­tions also had to be faxed or emailed.

FM iden­ti­fied the oppor­tu­ni­ty to build and imple­ment a new inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion man­age­ment sys­tem that would be the first of its kind in Aus­tralia. Work to design and imple­ment the sys­tem is a sig­nif­i­cant pro­gram of change for the FM work­force and for some exter­nal stakeholders.

While the Foren­sic Med­i­cine Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem is still being imple­ment­ed and refined, the sys­tem aims to deliv­er improved time-frames, full inte­gra­tion of case records, enhanced trace­abil­i­ty of case data, and bet­ter expe­ri­ences for our FM work­force, bereaved fam­i­lies and stakeholders.