Department of Forensic Medicine, Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital, 800 Vusi Mzimela Rd, Umkumbaan, Durban, 4091, South Africa.
Discipline of Clinical and Professional Practice, College of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.
Syst Rev. 2020 Apr 8;9(1):76. doi: 10.1186/s13643-020-01308-7.
Data related to forensic postmortems or autopsies are still mainly captured in hard copy format and archived. This paper-based practice impacts on the practitioner's ability to report on incidence, prevalence, and statistical trends related to cases that are commonly seen in mortuaries in forensic medicine. An autopsy can be used to inform and provide evidence-based knowledge for further research about important issues, including social development and assist in providing statistics and data for public health initiatives for implementation and monitoring. Currently, in forensic medicine and pathology research developments are largely hampered by the inefficient data capturing system which only allows access to basic information while pertinent information is largely recorded manually and is therefore difficult to obtain. There is thus a need to improve the efficiency of the data capturing system in forensic pathology, and this review is intended to inform the choice and decisions of appropriate data capture practices and is being conducted to identify nationally and internationally the current data mining and storage systems in place.
The methodology for this scoping review will be guided by the methodological framework for scoping review. The search strategy was developed by the authors, and we will conduct a search from 1 January 2008 of electronic databases (Cochrane Library, Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct) and search through WorldCat and PubMed for citations and literature using both keywords and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).The electronic search will be supplemented by hand searching references of the included studies and references in journals and websites. All articles will be assessed for eligibility by two reviewers (the primary and secondary authors) and uploaded into EndNote Excel spreadsheet, and duplicates will be identified and removed. The two reviewers (primary and secondary authors) will screen the eligible abstracts and articles against the inclusion criteria, and selection will be on a minimum percentage agreement of 50%. The selection process will be documented by following and using a PRISMA flow diagram. The extracted data will be analyzed and reported in the form of a narrative review with descriptive analysis and text analysis once the data is summarized for description and characterization.
The results of this review will identify and describe data capturing, management, and storage practices for use in forensic medicine. It will also review the efficiency of the different data systems and report where possible on the uses of the data system within the forensic medicine and pathology field.
Although research ethics approval is not required for this scoping review because the study will not include human or animal participants, the study was submitted for approval to the University of Kwazulu Natal Biomedical Research Ethics Committee and obtained provisional approval. Data will be sourced only from published literature and gray literature. The results will be presented at relevant national and international conferences and published in a peer-reviewed journal. All search results including excluded studies will be added into an addendum in the article and made available for public perusal to therefore ensure transparency and reproducibility.
法医尸检或解剖相关数据仍主要以纸质形式记录和存档。这种基于纸质的做法影响了从业者报告法医病理学中常见案例的发病率、患病率和统计趋势的能力。尸检可用于提供信息并为进一步研究提供循证知识，包括社会发展，并协助为公共卫生计划的实施和监测提供统计数据。目前，在法医学和病理学研究中，发展受到低效数据采集系统的严重阻碍，该系统仅允许访问基本信息，而相关信息主要以手动方式记录，因此难以获取。因此，需要提高法医病理学中数据采集系统的效率，本综述旨在为选择和决策适当的数据采集实践提供信息，并正在确定国内外现有的数据挖掘和存储系统。
本范围综述的方法将遵循范围综述的方法框架。该搜索策略由作者制定，我们将从 2008 年 1 月 1 日起对电子数据库（Cochrane 图书馆、Scopus、Web of Science 和 Science Direct）进行搜索，并通过 WorldCat 和 PubMed 使用关键词和医学主题词 (MeSH) 搜索引文和文献。电子搜索将辅以纳入研究的参考文献和期刊及网站的参考文献的手工搜索。两名评审员（主要和次要作者）将对所有文章进行资格评估，并将其上传到 EndNote Excel 电子表格中，并识别和删除重复项。两名评审员（主要和次要作者）将根据纳入标准筛选合格的摘要和文章，并选择至少 50%的最低百分比一致性。将通过遵循和使用 PRISMA 流程图来记录选择过程。一旦对数据进行总结和描述，将以叙述性综述的形式对提取的数据进行分析和报告，包括描述性分析和文本分析。
该综述的结果将确定和描述法医中使用的数据采集、管理和存储实践。它还将审查不同数据系统的效率，并报告数据系统在法医和病理学领域的使用情况。
由于本范围综述不包括人类或动物参与者，因此不需要研究伦理批准，但该研究已提交给夸祖鲁-纳塔尔大学生物医学研究伦理委员会，并获得了临时批准。数据仅来源于已发表的文献和灰色文献。结果将在相关的国家和国际会议上展示，并发表在同行评议的期刊上。所有搜索结果，包括被排除的研究，都将添加到文章的附录中，供公众查阅，以确保透明度和可重复性。
