Civil Service Award - Insight & Analysis

In 2016, the State Laboratory won a civil service award for the following project The Invisible Killer: Identifying New Designer Drugs in Post-Mortem Forensic Toxicology.

This project to identify new designer drugs in post-moterm forensic toxicology samples coupled innovative analytical chemical technology with proactive monitoring of national and European drug alerts to optimise the current toxicology screening strategy where many designer drugs (also known as Novel Psychoactive Substances, or NPS) were outside the traditional scope of testing.

This novel approach has a major advantage in that data from suspect cases can be retrospectively analysed for new Novel Psychoactive Substances without the need to physically retest the original sample. Key stakeholders (e.g. the Coroner's Service and the general public) are now benefiting from a faster, cheaper and more relevant toxicology screening service that captures a current and realistic 'snapshot' of the drug market, ensuring better outcomes in death investigations.