Are coroners and medical examiners already using artificial intelligence (AI) in their medicolegal death investigations? For what purposes? How will AI affect the work of coroners? It’s time to ask these questions. In 2022, a scientific paper claimed that “the traditional way of doing an autopsy and framing an opinion has a lot of limitations…
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Remembering Michael P. Rellahan, our local newspaperman
On November 8, 2018, while I was Chester County (PA)’s Coroner, we held a memorial ceremony, perhaps the first ever, for fifty-two unclaimed persons whose cremains had resided in the coroner’s office for years. I’ve written before about the sad issue of bodies left unclaimed, but on that day in 2018 we celebrated the lives…
Mental Health Risks Among Death Investigators
By Christina VandePol Mental health risks among death investigators are unavoidable, but have long been dismissed or downplayed by the mental health community, governments (their employers), and even medicolegal death investigators (MDIs) themselves. That may be changing. I’ve written elsewhere about the physical risks—musculoskeletal injuries from heavy lifting, infectious diseases, and chemical (drug) exposure—inherent in…