Testimonials

Thank you NCIS. I appreciated your help shaping my enquiry, and the information you then provided in response was both spot on and on time!

Coroner Simon McGregor

Coroners Court of Victoria

Just brilliant! Thank you so much for taking the time to do that [search on deaths involving logging incidents] for me… absolutely invaluable! It’s great to see the worth of your wonderful program in action. Well done!

Deputy State Coroner Jacqueline Milledge

Coroners Court of New South Wales

The NCIS system provides the ABS with a single point of access for coding coroner certified deaths across the State and Territory jurisdictions. It has proven to be an invaluable aid with regard to mortality coding undertaken by the ABS, saving significant time and staff resources. 

Enhancements to the quality and availability of information on the NCIS have led to improved accuracy and timeliness of cause of death coding over recent years. This has been especially important in providing high quality information on accidental deaths, and deaths from intentional self-harm, both critical areas for policy and research.

James Eynstone-Hinkins

Director, Social and Demographic Statistics

Australian Bureau of Statistics

The NCIS has been very important in Safe Work Australia’s collection of work-related fatalities.  It is a valuable and high quality source of information that assists our agency assess the full extent of work-related deaths from traumatic injuries occurring each year.  We use this collection to create a national picture of work-related fatalities, which informs WHS and workers’ compensation policy and practices and assists Safe Work Australia to contribute to healthier, safer and more productive workplaces.

Safe Work Australia

Prior to the establishment of the NCIS, coroners had to rely on memory or word of mouth to find previous cases that might be relevant to deaths currently being investigated. The NCIS has proven to be a valuable resource for the Queensland State Coroner and other Queensland Coroners. The NCIS is able to identify similar Queensland and Australian cases for review which may assist coroners to make effective, evidence based recommendations.

Leanne Field

Coordinator, Information Release Team

Office of the State Coroner, Queensland

The NCIS was very handy for our office when we did a full review of all our long-term missing persons and unidentified human remains. We were able to find all the bits of information that we were missing such as coronial findings etc.

Richard Gozman

Investigator, Missing Persons Registry

NSW Police Force

The NCIS is a valuable and comprehensive database for research on suicide in Australia. It contains some coded information and in-depth information on text reports. These are very useful in conducting research to inform suicide prevention policy and practice. The database is easy to use.

The NCIS staff have been very supportive and helpful. They always provide prompt replies and assistances to our data queries. Our experience in using the NCIS for research has been extremely positive.

Dr Lay San Too

Senior Research Fellow

Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

I am certain that many Australians would wish for others to learn from tragedy. We have created a world leading registry of people who have died suddenly due to heart abnormalities and have used this to better understand the causes with the ultimate aim of preventing future cases. The NCIS is an incredible resource to enable life-saving lessons. We are enormously grateful to be able to access this resource and for the infrastructure support required to make this possible.

Associate Professor Andre La Gerche

Head of Cardiovascular Research

Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute

Royal Life Saving have worked with the NCIS for a number of years. This is an extremely valuable tool for us in triangulating and confirming drowning data to inform our research. Our National Fatal Drowning Database is very comprehensive and considered one of the best in the world, and it is because we can get accurate and in-depth information that is used to underpin evidence-based research that then informs policy, practice and advocacy for drowning prevention in Australia.

The NCIS staff have always been very helpful and supportive with data queries and training assistance. I would like to acknowledge the Quality Specialist and Access Officer in particular, who provide significant support during our annual drowning report case confirmation, we very much appreciate this assistance and they are testament to the service that the NCIS team provides.

Stacey Pidgeon

National Manager, Research and Policy

Royal Life Saving Society Australia

The NCIS is an invaluable resource to my research and has been for over a decade. It remains one of the most unique databases internationally in terms of its content, accessibility, and data quality and has led me to new collaborations with researchers throughout the world.

My research, which focuses predominantly on drug-related death and other issues relevant to forensic medicine and public health, relies on high quality medico-legal data, which I have been able to access using NCIS for a range of different studies I have published in recent years.

The NCIS staff are always helpful and happy to assist my research staff and PhD students with search techniques and other queries relating to use of the database. The NCIS is a superior resource for forensic and medico-legal research.

Dr Jennifer Pilgrim

Senior Research Fellow and Head, Drug Harm Prevention Unit

Monash University

The National Coronial Information System is a unique resource that enables us to conduct research that could not be done in any other country. Through it, and its highly skilled and efficient staff, we have been able to publish national studies that have shed new light on drug-related deaths, and how we may intervene to prevent them. Australia should be proud, and grateful, that we have NCIS.

NCIS is a national treasure for researchers. In my field of drug-related death it enables national studies on existing and emerging harms, which is not feasible in other countries. NCIS is easy to navigate, well-maintained, and the support is uniformly excellent.

Professor Shane Darke

National Drug & Alcohol Research Centre

University of New South Wales

Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) has been fortunate enough to work with the team from NCIS for a number of years. The information we have been able to access and use, in addition to the consultation and support that has been provided by the NCIS staff, has been invaluable for our research. SLSA recognises the information provided by NCIS as the most reliable and comprehensive ‘gold standard’, enhancing our own information. The support from NCIS staff has at all times provided timely and accurate insights, assistance and advice. This has enabled SLSA to conduct research and analysis into aquatic and drowning deaths that drive the development of evidence-based water safety strategies and initiatives for the future.

Shane Daw

National Coastal Risk & Safety Manager

Surf Life Saving Australia

The NCIS has been a valuable resource for our organisation by providing the avenue to search for coronial cases relating to our field of study and enabling access to some relevant data on these fatal events. The support staff have been very accessible and helpful.

Dr John Lippman

Chairman and CEO - Australiasian Diving Safety Foundation

Adjunct Senior Research Fellow - Monash University

I have worked with the NCIS data and staff involving a number of projects related to epilepsy-related mortality.  The staff, mechanism and platform has been seamless and has resulted in a richer understanding of the circumstances and pathology leading to invaluable insights around patient mortality.

Wendyl D'Souza

Associate Professor of Neuroepidemiology & Health Services Research, Head of Epilepsy

Department of Medicine, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, The University of Melbourne

The NCIS play an extremely important role as a vital “one-stop” point of access for all Coronial data from near the turn of this century for genuine researchers. We certainly could not have completed our work to the standard we were able to reach without their services and will be eternally grateful for both the detail of the data and the ease with which (after appropriate approvals were sought and granted) it was made available.

Lucinda Coates

Senior Researcher, Risk Frontiers

Macquarie University

Kat Hayes

Project Manager, Risk Frontiers

Macquarie University

Currently the NSW Department of Health relies on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for information on the number of deaths and their causes. The National Coronial Information System has the potential to provide richer and more timely information than is currently available, and will improve the Department’s ability to monitor the occurrence of unnatural deaths, implement programs targeting relevant risk factors and evaluate prevention programs.

Lee Taylor

Manager, Surveillance Methods Epidemiology and Surveillance Branch

New South Wales Department of Health

The National Coronial Information System is the most innovative and comprehensive initiative anywhere in the world to make use of Coroners’ information, and should underpin all major research initiatives into fatal injury in Australia.

Professor Tim Driscoll

Epidemiology and Occupational Medicine

Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney

NCIS is unique and Australia is the envy of every country where I have presented injury data and research in recent years, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand and other Asian Pacific countries.

Professor Joan Ozanne-Smith

Head of Prevention Research

Monash University

We are finding the information from the NCIS to be very useful. We are able to study the topic of interest (alcohol and water safety) in ways that go beyond what we could do with any other practicable source. We have been able to undertake this part of our project quickly (i.e. within a few weeks), once we obtained access to the relevant set of NCIS records.

Professor James Harrison

Research Centre for Injury Studies

Flinders University

The NCIS has been a key foundational resource for our investigations of sudden deaths in the young. The database is comprehensive, easily accessible, and provides important information for our research endeavours.

Professor Christopher Semsarian

Head, Molecular Cardiology Program

Centenary Institute

The team at the NCIS understood our requirements clearly and provided us a report on self-harm deaths by occupation. The data report has allowed our team to gain insight into to topic and has informed our internal strategies and policy work. Given the quality of output, we look forward to working with the NCIS again in the future.

Jason Delgado

Data and Impact Analyst

Suicide Prevention Australia

We have found the NCIS data report service very useful. The team are always helpful, responsive, and the reports have been within the agreed timeframes. The data assists us in creating Regulatory Impact Assessments to the Office of Best Practice Regulation, which is a required step for evidence-based policy proposals. We also use the data as part of targeted stakeholder consultation with industry groups and peak bodies.

William Le-Roux Hitch

Project Officer – Consumer and Product Safety Division

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

While completing multi-agency national research into Suicide in Road Transport (SiRT), we relied upon the National Coronial Information System for the delivery of sensitive information for data sources to complement our research. The team at NCIS were always very efficient, professional and timely in responding to our numerous requests, and always assisted us in navigating the data streams. Having a one-stop service to navigate the various jurisdictions was extremely beneficial and the reports received were a very valuable resource.

Chris L'Ecluse

National Road Safety Partnership Program

The NCIS provides a professional and practical resource that is invaluable in providing clear, high quality data that can assist with preventing future deaths. It allows us to compare ourselves with other jurisdictions. This can be helpful in identifying variations and focussing our policy and prevention efforts.

Penny Tolhurst

Principal Policy Adviser, Programs and Performance, Mental Health Branch, Health and Wellbeing Division

Victorian Department of Health and Human Services

We have been the recipients of targeted data reports on several occasions that were focussed on particular cohorts of reportable deaths. The data reports were invaluable in providing important information to either be referred to in the State Coroner’s annual report, or to assist coroners in research as to the prevalence of particular types of death within the state or nationally.

The extent to which the NCIS go to ensuring that the data is correct, accurate and quality controlled, provides us with the utmost of confidence and assurance as to the reliability of the report, and the degree of confidence that can be applied when using or referring to the data.

The turnaround times for receiving the reports that are often intricate has always surpassed our expectations, and as such we are extremely grateful to staff at NCIS for being an invaluable source to the court when required.

Mirko Amidzic

Office Manager

Coroner’s Court of Western Australia

The reports I have received from NCIS have enabled me to advise the Coroner about the frequency of particular death mechanisms, and in particular, whether those death mechanisms are becoming more or less common. This assists the Coroner to identify whether there are systemic issues to address, potentially via inquest, or whether there is a need for legislative change, such as a proposed amendment to the Poisons Standards.

Emma Roper

Special Counsel Assisting the Coroner

Coroner’s Court of South Australia