In the event of an unexpected death, the police complete a Sudden Death Report which is passed to the Procurator Fiscal.

The Procurator Fiscal then calls for a full pathological and toxicological post-mortem examination to be conducted to determine the cause of death.

On completion of the post-mortem examination, the Local Critical Incident Monitoring Group and Data Collection Co-ordinator decide if the case matches the inclusion criteria for the NDRDD (i.e. if it is a drug-related death as per the NDRDD definition).

If these criteria are met, a case record is submitted to PHS.

For deaths up to and including 2013, data were sent to ISD and entered into a secure database by the PHS Data Management team.

Since 2014, death data have been entered directly into a secure database by data co-ordinators in each respective health board area.

This database is managed centrally within PHS Data Management.

Any queries relating to the database or data information contained should be forwarded to phs.drddatacollection@phs.scot.