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Epilepsy contributes to a substantial proportion of the global burden of neurological disease, affecting 50–70 million people wordwide. [1,2] In the United Kingdom (UK) alone, seizures are the most common neurological cause of unscheduled hospital admissions. [3] People with epilepsy (PWE) are at significantly increased risk of premature death. [4–8] Some of those deaths may be entirely unrelated to their epilepsy, [5,9] for example in an assault or a pulmonary embolism. In such cases, the epilepsy is not mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, in line with national death certification guidance.