National Coroners Information System

The National Coroners Information System (NCIS) is a national internet based data storage and retrieval system for Australian coronial cases. Information about every death reported to an Australian coroner since July 2000 (January 2001 for Queensland) is stored within the system, providing a valuable hazard identification and death prevention tool for coroners and research agencies.

The NCIS has a primary role to assist coroners in their role as death investigators, by providing them with the ability to review previous coronial cases that may be similar in nature to current investigations, enhancing their ability to identify and address systematic hazards within the community.

Approved research and government agencies also utilise the NCIS to obtain valuable information concerning the circumstances of reported fatalities, to assist in the development of community health and safety strategies.

The NCIS is an initiative of the Australasian Coroners Society, and is based at and managed by the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM). The NCIS is funded by a range of Commonwealth and State/Territory agencies.

NCIS Latest news

The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM) will be hosting its triennial Oration on Wednesday 8 October 2008. The Oration forms part of the Institute's 20th birthday celebrations.

The VIFM is delighted to be able to welcome the Honourable Stephen Goudge, Justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal, to speak about his time as Commissioner inquiring into paediatric forensic pathology in Ontario, Canada. He will talk about his reflections on, and lessons to be learned from, this failure in the forensic pathology system and its consequences for the criminal justice system.

The Oration will take place at 5:00pm at Zinc (located at Federation Square in Melbourne), and is open to the general public.

A fact sheet about deaths reported to a Coroner between 2003 and 2006 of those aged 13-25 years with a BAC of greater than or equal to 0.05g/100mL has been released. This report uses data from the NCIS and can be viewed here.

14/11/2007 – NCIS Codeset Upgrade and NCIS Product Related Deaths Bulletin

Click here to access Codeset Upgrade Concordance Document, and here to access a Bulletin produced by the NCIS team on product related deaths.

Click here to access a Bulletin produced by the NCIS team on deaths related to house fires.

The implementation of the upgrade to the latest version of the coding system used for many fields on the NCIS (ICECI) is now underway. For further information, please refer to the following page.

Click here to view some of the things authorised users of the NCIS should take into consideration when conducting searches of the database.

04/04/2007 – Inclusion of ICD-10 and ASGC codes for 2005

Codes provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ICD-10 and ASGC) are now available on the NCIS for cases reported in 2005.

Of the 18,827 cases reported to a Coroner in 2005, the NCIS has ICD-10 and ASGC codes for 87%.

For further information on what data is contained on the NCIS, please refer to the following page.

27/11/2006

Use of the STOP button on your web browser when searching NCIS - Please read!

We have recently had several occasions when users have started to run a query through the query design or coroners search screen, and due to the time taken to return results/or wishing to change the nature of their search, have hit the STOP button on their browser and restarted the search again.

Despite appearances that the search has stopped on the web interface, the original search does continue running in the background environment. Therefore, running searches and selecting the stop button multiple times actually slows down system performance, and affects others access to the database. Therefore please consider the following before running a NCIS search: MORE