As the demand for DNA testing continues to grow, laboratories begin to validate new methods and increase capability, only to learn that additional state or federal law now requires them to process even more samples. Everyday, DNA is used by government and private laboratories all around the world to provide critical information to law enforcement officials for criminal investigations. And the success of DNA when compared to traditional investigative methods¹ continues to fuel the desire for more—more samples, more information from those samples, more quickly than ever before. With the reauthorization of the Debbie Smith Act now approved in the United States,² laboratories can rely on the availability of funds—and now must critically evaluate and prioritize the adoption of new technologies. With so many improvements across the entire forensic DNA testing workflow introduced over the last five years, forensic scientists and managers are now faced with hard choices and must implement solutions that alleviate bottlenecks most quickly.

THE PROBLEMS INTRINSIC TO CASEWORK DATA REVIEW Historically, data analysis and review has been a time consuming activity that drives forensic laboratories to seek automated solutions enabling them to reduce the amount of analyst time required to interpret large volumes of data. Laboratories continue to indicate that they spend the majority of their time on this tedious, but incredibly important part of the forensic DNA testing process. Over the past few years, information collected from forensic analysts confirms that, on average, over 50% of their time can be dedicated to this process alone. From this, it’s easy to see why utilizing improved data management and software systems should be one of, if not the, highest priority. Recently, forensic laboratories have begun to evaluate new software systems to assist them with this process. The concept of expert system software has emerged and its use is gaining approval from the National DNA Index System (NDIS) as more laboratories take advantage of the automation offered by this type of software.

Expert systems have been well described ^3,4,5 and can be an efficient means of minimizing the time needed for analysis of routine forensic databasing samples. Analysis and review of single source samples requires time, so automated processing of these samples reduces the overall effort spent on data management. However, reliance on expert systems to be able to make the final analysis decisions for all of the more time consuming casework samples is not practical at this time due to the interpretation complexities involved. These challenges are often inherently attributed to the sample which necessitate a greater amount of time spent on analysis and interpretation. The quality of the interpretation and the amount of time required to analyze and review even the most complex forensic samples can be improved by using advanced analysis tools that integrate the laboratory’s validated parameters and highlight the steps requiring human decision making–essentially creating an expert assistant to the analyst. Automated calculations tailored to casework samples allow laboratories to truly realize the benefits and recognize the significant time savings and quality enhancements similar to that offered by expert systems for analysis of database samples.

Employing one software system that provides improved analysis tools for both forensic databasing and casework workflows is ideal. This allows forensic analysts to leverage the automated processes and functionality utilized by expert systems for the analysis of single source samples, and apply them to forensic casework samples. In addition, it simplifies the analysis of difficult forensic evidence samples that may still require manual review by utilizing those processes to evaluate the data according to a set of defined rules and present the results so that the analyst understands the contents of the data and can make an informed interpretation decision.