December 15, 2015
A shortened verbal autopsy instrument for use in routine mortality surveillance systems
Research Article
Verbal autopsy (VA) is recognized as the only feasible alternative to comprehensive medical certification of deaths in settings with no or unreliable vital registration systems. However, a barrier to its use by national registration systems has been the amount of time and cost needed for data collection. In this paper we describe a shortened version of the VA instrument developed for the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium Gold Standard Verbal Autopsy Validation Study using a systematic approach.
December 8, 2015
Improving performance of the Tariff Method for assigning causes of death to verbal autopsies
Research Article
In the absence of comprehensive medical certification of deaths, the only feasible way to collect essential mortality data is verbal autopsy (VA). The Tariff Method was developed by the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium to ascertain causes of death from VA information. We describe the further development of the Tariff Method.
January 9, 2014
Using verbal autopsy to measure causes of death: the comparative performance of existing methods
Research Article
Monitoring progress with disease and injury reduction in many populations will require widespread use of verbal autopsy (VA). Multiple methods have been developed for assigning cause of death from a VA but their application is restricted by uncertainty about their reliability.
August 31, 2011
Robust metrics for assessing the performance of different verbal autopsy cause assignment methods in validation studies
Research Article
Choosing the best method for verbal autopsy (VA) requires the appropriate metrics to assess a given method’s performance, and researchers from IHME and the University of Queensland undertook a study to determine these metrics.
August 31, 2011
Assessing quality of medical death certification: concordance between gold standard diagnoses and underlying cause of death in selected Mexican hospitals
Research Article
The vital registration system in Mexico relies on information collected from death certificates to generate official mortality figures. A study by researchers at IHME and the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico set out to test the validity of this system.
August 31, 2011
Random forests for verbal autopsy analysis: multisite validation study using clinical diagnostic gold standards
Research Article
An innovative method of computer-coded verbal autopsy, the Random Forest (RF) Method from machine learning, was found to outperform physician-certified verbal autopsy (PCVA) in almost all settings, according to a study by researchers from IHME and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC).
August 31, 2011
Performance of InterVA for assigning causes of death to verbal autopsies: multisite validation study using clinical diagnostic gold standards
Research Article
InterVA, an automated and widely available tool for assigning cause of death using verbal autopsies (VAs), does not perform as well as other methods, such as physician-certified verbal autopsy (PCVA) and the Simplified Symptom Pattern (SSP) method, according to a study published by researchers at IHME and the University of Queensland, as part of the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC).
August 31, 2011
Direct estimation of cause-specific mortality fractions from verbal autopsies: multisite validation study using clinical diagnostic gold standards
Research Article
The King and Lu (KL) method for directly estimating the fraction of all deaths in a population due to a given cause has been used to interpret verbal autopsies (VAs) in areas with incomplete vital registration systems.
August 31, 2011
Performance of physician-certified verbal autopsies: multisite validation study using clinical diagnostic gold standards
Research Article
Physician certification is the most widely used method for interpreting verbal autopsy (VA), yet physicians correctly determine cause of death less than half of the time, according to new research by IHME and the University of Queensland as part of the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC).
August 31, 2011
Population Health Metrics Research Consortium gold standard verbal autopsy validation study: design, implementation, and development of analysis datasets
Research Article
The creation of the first strictly defined gold standard database of diagnoses for causes of death will help strengthen verbal autopsy (VA) methods in low-resource settings, according to a study published by a global group of researchers, the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC), which includes researchers from IHME.
August 31, 2011
Performance of the Tariff Method: validation of a simple additive algorithm for analysis of verbal autopsies.
Research Article
The Tariff method, an easy-to-use tool developed by researchers at IHME for turning verbal autopsy (VA) results into meaningful cause of death data for health workers and policymakers, is capable of outperforming the more costly physician-certified verbal autopsy (PCVA) approach in most cases, according to new research by IHME as part of the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC).
August 31, 2011
Simplified Symptom Pattern Method for verbal autopsy analysis: multisite validation study using clinical diagnostic gold standards
Research Article
New research from IHME, the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington, and the University of Queensland as part of the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) shows that the Simplified Symptom Pattern (SSP) method can be used to accurately interpret verbal autopsies (VAs).
July 27, 2011
Verbal autopsy: innovations, applications, opportunities
Research Article
“Verbal autopsy: innovations, applications, opportunities” is a collection of the most up-to-date research to help decision-makers choose the best and most cost-effective techniques to identify causes of death in their populations.
November 20, 2007
Validation of the symptom pattern method for analyzing verbal autopsy data
Research Article
Research published in PLoS Medicine  in November 2007 validated a novel method for analyzing verbal autopsy data (the symptom pattern method, developed at IHME) and found that this method outperformed another common verbal autopsy analytical method (physician-coded verbal autopsy, or PCVA).