The Drugs Module project aims to enhance the amount, consistency and timeliness of the data available about the role of drugs and alcohol in coronial deaths. This project has been funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing.

The goal of this project is to obtain additional information directly from the toxicology laboratories to enhance the existing NCIS core data set. This would involve collecting information about the following:

• whether a full or partial toxicology screen was performed;
• whether drugs/alcohol were detected;
• the name of the drug, chemical class of the drug and what specimen was tested;
• the BAC level if alcohol was detected;
• the classification of death from a toxicological point of view (eg. was the drug detected a therapeutic dose, toxic amount, involved a drug interaction or would have caused impairment)

This information would be stored in additional data fields in the NCIS, and could therefore be searched upon in conjunction with existing NCIS data.

A further goal of the Drugs Module was to encourage standardisation across Australia with regards to toxicology testing and reporting.

Achievements to date on the drugs module project have involved:

• Two workshops conducted involving toxicologists, police, forensic pathologists and drug researchers concerning the data sets to be collected for the drugs module and standardisation of terminology.
• Agreement by pathologists around Australia to a common reporting format for cause of death in multiple drug fatalities. Pathologists will now report in the format "Multiple Drug Toxicity (drug 1, drug 2, drug 3...etc)". Previously the cause of death may have just read "multiple drug toxicity" but not given an indication as to what drugs were involved.
• Production of a Glossary of terms used by pathologists in describing the cause of death in drug related cases.
• Agreement by toxicologists nationally on the standardised terms for chemical classes of drugs and information to be collected for the NCIS Drugs Module.
• Incorporation of standardised questions concerning drug and alcohol deaths on the national police form for reporting of death.

Next steps:

A delay in the implementation of the drugs module was encountered in 2003 when it was found that the transfer of information from the toxicology laboratories around Australia to the NCIS would in some cases require a significant upgrade to local case management systems in the laboratory, for which funds were not locally available.

Over the past few years those toxicology laboratories which had older case management systems have upgraded or implemented new systems for operational reasons, which should now allow an easier collection and transfer of the required drugs module information.

Further work on the Drugs Module is scheduled for 2006/07, with Victorian drugs data to be sourced from the Victorian Institute Forensic Medicine toxicology laboratory, as a pilot project.

Implementation nationwide is contingent on further funding being required.

For reports concerning the drugs module, please see the Publications Section