About the Preventable Deaths Tracker
We harness information from coroners to drive action that saves lives.
Why do we need a Preventable Deaths Tracker?
One-fifth of deaths are deemed avoidable each year – that’s over 125,000 deaths in England and Wales. Coroners investigate these deaths, with approx. 37,000 inquests a year.
By law, coroners must write a report when they believe action should be taken to prevent future deaths. Yet, less than 1% of avoidable deaths and 2% of inquests have such reports written.
Organisations who receive reports must reply to the coroner within 56 days. Despite these laws, our work illustrates that many reports, at least half, don’t have all responses published.
There was no system to collate, track, or learn from these deaths. The Preventable Deaths Tracker is changing this.
Our mission
The core purpose of the Preventable Deaths Tracker is to save lives by enabling learning from avoidable and premature deaths.
Our work
The Preventable Deaths Tracker is the first of its kind, globally. It’s a centralised database of all coroners’ Prevention of Future Deaths reports published in England and Wales, but it also makes this information usable and accessible so that real-time analytics, statistics, and research can be systematically conducted and replicated.
- Build tools: We automate the collection and analysis of information from coroners to provide databases and interactive dashboards.
- Track transparency: We create tracking systems to examine reports and organisational responses to coroners, ensuring open justice, shared learning & accountability.
- Conduct research: We have developed reproducible methods that enable the surveillance & monitoring of safety concerns, which are widely published in academic journals & policy documents.
- Education: We train the next generation and build the capacity to create future leaders in the field of death prevention. We also use our platform to raise public awareness of the death investigation system.
Our aims
- Tools: Create robust and efficient systems for disseminating real-time analytics, statistics, and lessons from avoidable deaths.
- Survellience: Develop methods for identifying and monitoring safety signals and trends from coroners’ reports and organisational responses.
- Practice & Policy: Use our discoveries and research findings to inform the practice of death investigations, reviews, and policies that seek to minimise harm and prevent deaths.
Dr Georgia Richards
Founder & Director of the Preventable Deaths Tracker
Epidemiologist & Research Scientist | King’s Prize Fellow, King’s College London | Honorary Senior Associate Tutor, University of Oxford
Academic Advisory Board
The Preventable Deaths Tracker is used to conduct academic research, which is supported by experts in epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, evidence synthesis, pharmacology, toxicology, drug safety, pharmacy, clinical medicine, linguistics, open science, big data, analytics, medical law and coronial law.
Dr Jeffrey Aronson
Consultant Physician, Clinical Pharmacologist & Linguist
University of Oxford
Dr Richard Brittain
Medical Adviser & Assistant Coroner
Medical & Dental Defence Union of Scotland
Dr Caroline Copeland
Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology & Toxicology
King’s College London
Prof Anthony Cox
Professor in Clinical Pharmacy & Drug Safety, Registered Pharmacist
University of Birmingham
Dr Francesco Dernie
Resident Doctor in Internal Medicine & Academic Clinical Fellow in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics
St George’s Hospital, London
Prof Robin Ferner
Professor, Honorary Consultant Physician, Clinical Pharmacologist & Toxicologist
University of Birmingham
Prof Carl Heneghan
Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, Clinical Epidemiologist & General Practitioner
University of Oxford
Gillian Mawdsley
Solicitor (Scotland) & Associate Lecturer in Law
The Open University
Key milestones of the Preventable Deaths Tracker
Support the Preventable Deaths Tracker
If you or your organisation can provide sustainable funding for the Preventable Deaths Tracker, please do get in contact.