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Literature context

This is a scoped orientation search, not a systematic literature review. Searches on 14 July 2026 combined Prevention of Future Deaths with digital health, electronic records, interoperability and military EHR concepts across PubMed and the open web.

What is already established

  • PFD reports have been collected and analysed at scale using reproducible web-scraping methods. Zhang and Richards described a 4,001-report dataset available to June 2022 and highlighted limitations in the public reporting system.[^zhang]
  • Subject-specific PFD case series and thematic analyses already exist, including emergency-department reports and a 2026 mental-health analysis.[^ed][^mental]
  • A 2025 systematic review of military EHR literature included 29 studies and identified interoperability, infrastructure, privacy/security and the deployment environment among recurring implementation challenges.[^military]
  • A large patient-safety incident analysis found interoperability events concentrated around pharmacy, laboratory and radiology interfaces, particularly information received by an EHR from another system.[^interop]

These sources support the feasibility of a coded PFD case series and the operational relevance of the derived hazard domains. They do not validate this project's individual case coding, which remains grounded in the official Judiciary reports.

Method and reporting context

  • JBI evidence-synthesis guidance and the PRISMA 2020 reporting checklist support explicit separation of question, eligibility, search, selection, data items, synthesis, limitations and implications (SRC-030 and SRC-031). They are used as transparency aids; the current work does not claim full JBI or PRISMA conduct.
  • NHS England patient-safety thematic-review guidance supports making deductive and inductive framing visible, triangulating sources and showing the route from source material to themes (SRC-032).
  • The Judiciary's 2026 PFD guidance explains searchable fields, consistent full-text webpage availability from 2023 and the important boundary that coroners do not assess response adequacy or enforce action (SRC-033). This materially limits earlier retrieval and implementation claims.
  • Evidence-mapping practice informed the case-by-mechanism matrix, but an em dash is not called an evidence gap because the corpus is targeted and codes are reviewer-assigned (SRC-036).
  • Living-review guidance supports an explicit surveillance and update schedule, but the project is not described as a living systematic review (SRC-037).

See the source register for provenance and scope notes on these records.

Novelty boundary

The scoped searches did not identify a peer-reviewed case series specifically synthesising digital-health and EHR concerns across PFD reports. That is not proof that no such study exists. Do not use “first study” or equivalent wording unless a formal database search, protocol and librarian-supported check establish it.

Trend boundary

A Welsh Government statement reported that total PFD publication in 2023 was about 35% higher than in 2022 and separately discussed integrated-record concerns in NHS Wales.[^wales] This does not establish that the proportion or count of digital-health-related PFDs increased. A digital trend claim requires a stable case definition, a year-by-year numerator and an appropriate denominator.

[^zhang]: Zhang Q, Richards GC. Lessons from web scraping coroners' Prevention of Future Deaths reports. Medico-Legal Journal. 2023. [^ed]: Hodgson S et al. Thematic analysis of Prevention of Future Deaths reports related to emergency departments, 2013–2022. Emergency Medicine Journal. 2024. [^mental]: Qin H et al. Network and thematic analysis of mental-health-related PFD reports, 2013–2025. 2026. [^military]: Torab-Miandoab A et al. Electronic health record in military healthcare systems: a systematic review. PLOS ONE. 2025. [^interop]: An analysis of patient-safety incident reports associated with EHR interoperability. 2018. [^wales]: Welsh Government written statement: Prevention of Future Deaths reports in Wales, 19 March 2024.