Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104 F fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure. "How does that happen in a modern society?" his father, Ciaran Staunton, said in a recent interview with Undark. Each year in the United States, sepsis kills over a quarter million people -- more than stroke, diabetes, or lung cancer.

Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104 F fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure. "How does that happen in a modern society?" his father, Ciaran Staunton, said in a recent interview with Undark.

Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104 F fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure. "How does that happen in a modern society?" his father, Ciaran Staunton, said in a recent interview with Undark. Each year in the United States, sepsis kills over a quarter million people -- more than stroke, diabetes, or lung cancer.

It could soon save the lives of thousands of people. Sepsis is one of the most common diseases in the inpatient sector. Starting treatment as early as possible significantly increases the chances of survival. Infectious diseases that get out of control cause Sepsis. In the United States, some 200,000 people die from sepsis each year, with many deaths considered preventable according to studies.

An AI designed to catch potentially fatal sepsis before it is too late has proven effective in a large real-world study. The algorithm, called the Targeted Real-time Early Warning System (TREWS), accurately flagged thousands of cases of sepsis -- a devastating overreaction to an infection -- before they had been identified by hospital staff. "Sepsis spirals extremely fast--like in a matter of hours if you don't get timely treatment," TREWS developer Suchi Saria, the founder and CEO of medical AI company Bayesian Health, told Scientific American's Sophie Bushwick. "I lost my nephew to sepsis. And in his case, for instance, sepsis wasn't suspected or detected until he was already in late stages of what's called septic shock," Saria said.

Bayesian Health and Johns Hopkins have announced ground-breaking results showing that many lives have been saved with a new clinically deployed AI platform called Targeted Real-Time Early Warning System (TREWS). The AI platform activates state-of-the-art AI within the electronic medical record and tracks patients from the moment they are admitted to hospital until they are discharged. The early warning system is designed to send alerts to healthcare providers when there is cause for concern. A real world study - conducted in 5 hospitals - demonstrated that the TREWS AI system led to the detection of sepsis on average almost 6 hours earlier than traditional methods, with a sensitivity rate of 82%. This is significant because sepsis is responsible for 20% of all deaths globally and early detection could save over 11 million lives every year.

Patients are 20% less likely to die of sepsis because a new AI system developed at Johns Hopkins University catches symptoms hours earlier than traditional methods, an extensive hospital study demonstrates. The system scours medical records and clinical notes to identify patients at risk of life-threatening complications. The work, which could significantly cut patient mortality from one of the top causes of hospital deaths worldwide, is published today in Nature Medicine and Nature Digital Medicine. "It is the first instance where AI is implemented at the bedside, used by thousands of providers, and where we're seeing lives saved," said Suchi Saria, founding research director of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare at Johns Hopkins and lead author of the studies, which evaluated more than a half million patients over two years. "This is an extraordinary leap that will save thousands of sepsis patients annually. And the approach is now being applied to improve outcomes in other important problem areas beyond sepsis."

You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Patients are 20% less likely to die of sepsis because a new AI system catches symptoms hours earlier than traditional methods, new research shows. The system scours medical records and clinical notes to identify patients at risk of life-threatening complications. The work, which could significantly cut patient mortality from one of the top causes of hospital deaths worldwide, is published in Nature Medicine and Nature Digital Medicine. "It is the first instance where AI is implemented at the bedside, used by thousands of providers, and where we're seeing lives saved," says Suchi Saria, founding research director of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare at Johns Hopkins University, and lead author of the studies, which evaluated more than a half million patients over two years.

Patients are 20% less likely to die of sepsis because a new AI system developed at Johns Hopkins University catches symptoms hours earlier than traditional methods, an extensive hospital study demonstrates. The system, created by a Johns Hopkins researcher whose young nephew died from sepsis, scours medical records and clinical notes to identify patients at risk of life-threatening complications. The work, which could significantly cut patient mortality from one of the top causes of hospital deaths worldwide, is published today in Nature Medicine and npj Digital Medicine. "It is the first instance where AI is implemented at the bedside, used by thousands of providers, and where we're seeing lives saved," said Suchi Saria, founding research director of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare at Johns Hopkins and lead author of the studies, which evaluated more than a half million patients over two years. "This is an extraordinary leap that will save thousands of sepsis patients annually. And the approach is now being applied to improve outcomes in other important problem areas beyond sepsis."

Patients are 20% less likely to die of sepsis because a new AI system developed at Johns Hopkins University catches symptoms hours earlier than traditional methods, an extensive hospital study demonstrates. The system scours medical records and clinical notes to identify patients at risk of life-threatening complications. The work, which could significantly cut patient mortality from one of the top causes of hospital deaths worldwide, is published today in Nature Medicine and Nature Digital Medicine. "It is the first instance where AI is implemented at the bedside, used by thousands of providers, and where we're seeing lives saved," said Suchi Saria, founding research director of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare at Johns Hopkins and lead author of the studies, which evaluated more than a half million patients over two years. "This is an extraordinary leap that will save thousands of sepsis patients annually. And the approach is now being applied to improve outcomes in other important problem areas beyond sepsis."