Development of a mobile application to estimate time of death based on the compound method

During legal inspection, the time of death estimation based on the compound method incorporates the early postmortem changes livor, rigor and algor mortis, as well as supravital reactions. Currently, in forensic routine, the time of death estimation is usually performed on-site during the legal inspection. To streamline the procedure and facilitate its practical application, we developed a mobile application called "ToD" allowing the time of death estimation based on the compound method digitally on-site. To provide high performance and an intuitive user interface, the software Flutter was selected as development framework. The calculation engine of the ToD app operates without internet connection and delivers rapid and reliable calculations. Therefore, our ToD application enables forensic pathologists to perform real-time, on-site time of death estimations, replacing cumbersome paper-pencil based calculations.