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. 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.