Commentary This series provides an important opportunity to consider how diagnostic pathology autopsy could be used in conjunction with verbal autopsy to provide more accurate cause of death and mortality data in all countries, and specifically in those countries with inadequate or nonexistent death registrations systems. For the purposes of this commentary, the term “autopsy” will denote the medical-pathology diagnostic procedure, in contrast to “verbal autopsy.” The term “autopsy” means “to see or observe for oneself,” but traditional use has been reserved for the postmortem examination of a (dead) body by a physician/ pathologist, in order to identify diseases and injuries and determine the cause(s) of death. This medical-diagnostic pathology procedure integrates trained observation of the external and internal body with dissection or other invasive procedures, in order to obtain tissue samples, which are evaluated by microscopy and other specialized laboratory modalities, including chemical, toxicologic, genetic, and molecular biologic analyses. Used more broadly, the term “autopsy” reflects the aggregate of procedures used for postmortem medical diagnosis or death investigation, including investigative procedures that identify information about the deceased’s medical history and the circumstances and scene of his/her death. To most pathologists and physicians, the term “verbal autopsy” seems a contradiction in terms. However, it is a clearly defined procedure, which allows classification of cause of death and cause-s pecific mortality by the analysis of data derived from structured interviews of family, friends, and caretakers, as well as review of any available medical records [1]. As more than two-thirds of the world’s population lives and dies in countries that lack functional vital registration systems, and in which most deaths occur outside of medical facilities and are neither enumerated nor classified by cause, verbal autopsy has become the primary methodology for determining population-based cause-specific mortality [2,3]. The development of computerized algorithmic systems for determination of cause of death by analysis of verbal autopsy data is a major focus of health metrics research, and emphasis is currently focused on using the recentlycompleted dataset from the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) project that will allow analysis of verbal autopsy data collected from more than 12,000 hospitalized patients with causes of death established by rigorous clinical criteria.