Forensic anthropologists are faced with many challenges one of which is setting the grounds for the assessment of an unknown individual's population affinity, an essential element for building a biological profile that can lead to positive identification. A heavy body of literature is dealing with the topic of "race" -in early studies -or "ancestry/population affinity" -in more recent articles -in an effort to provide reliable tools for this challenging task. A great and ongoing debate exists on whether this type of classification should be done at all or whether it should be accepted as a "necessary evil". The over-simplistic categorization of people originating from vast geographical areas without taking into account micro-evolutionary and environmental factors, that are of great importance and influence population affinity, can greatly enhance social discrimination and stigma. On the other hand, it must be stressed that the point of assessing an individual's ancestry or geographic origin in a forensic context is not a matter of taxonomy or population labeling but rather an asset to the identification process, which can help narrow down possible matches from a missing persons' list. In that vein, the current paper offers an overview of different methodological approaches to the matter of ancestry estimation and aims to gather relevant information about the different approaches used, the current advances and the implications of the assessment regarding positive identification.
Objective This article describes the first digital clinical information system tailored to support the operational needs of a forensic unit in Greece and to maintain its archives. Method The development of our system was initiated towards the end of 2018, as a close collaboration between the Medical School of the University of Crete and the Forensic Medicine Unit of the University Hospital of Heraklion, Crete, where forensic pathologists assumed active roles during the specification and testing of the system. Results The final prototype of the system was able to manage the life cycle of any forensic case by allowing users to create new records, assign them to forensic pathologists, upload reports, multimedia and any required files; mark the end of processing, issue certificates or appropriate legal documents, produce reports and generate statistics. For the first 4 years of digitised data (2017–2021), the system recorded 2936 forensic examinations categorised as 106 crime scene investigations, 259 external examinations, 912 autopsies, 102 post-mortem CT examinations, 804 histological examinations, 116 clinical examinations, 12 anthropological examinations and 625 embalmings. Conclusion This research represents the first systematic effort to record forensic cases through a digital clinical information system in Greece, and to demonstrate its effectiveness, daily usability and vast potential for data extraction and for future research.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.