Could artificial intelligence prevent sepsis in hospital patients? Sentara thinks so.

During your stay in a hospital, computer systems are collecting and analyzing all sorts of data about you. In the background of all the beeping and gadgetry, an electronic medical record contains thousands of bits of information about your medical history, vital signs and laboratory results. Sentara Healthcare is now deploying artificial intelligence to use that data to stop patients from contracting life-threatening sepsis. Earlier this year the system launched a sepsis prediction tool that alerts doctors and nurses when a patient is at risk of developing the deadly infection. The tool "looks at relationships in order to predict what might happen in the future," said Dr. David Mohr, Sentara's vice president of clinical informatics and transformation.