Why Sepsis Still Gets Missed and How Prenosis Is Narrowing the Signal
Sepsis has been a known threat for decades, yet it still slips past clinicians every day. The problem is not awareness or organizational will. It is variability, speed, and signal overload. In busy care environments, early warning systems often cast too wide a net, forcing clinicians to choose between missing risk and chasing noise.
Why Sepsis Detection Still Breaks Down at the Point of Care
At the annual IHI Forum, Robin Carver, Senior Vice President of Commercialization at Prenosis, unpacked why sepsis remains so difficult to diagnose and how precision diagnostics and narrowly focused AI could change what early detection of sepsis looks like.
Key Takeaways
- Sepsis remains a challenging problem in healthcare. Addressing it effectively requires aligning clinical judgment, standardized processes, and more precise technology—rather than relying on any single solution.
- Prenosis’ approach to sepsis accounts for biological individuality. By focusing on personalized immune response rather than broad population thresholds, the approach aims to give clinicians clearer, more actionable insight into sepsis risk.
The Deadly Toll of Sepsis
The CDC defines Sepsis as the body’s extreme response to an infection. It is a life-threatening medical emergency that occurs when an infection triggers a chain reaction throughout the body.
According to the Sepsis Alliance, Sepsis is the leading cause of death in US hospitals. responsible for over 350,000 deaths each year, roughly one every 90 seconds. The estimated annual cost of sepsis care exceeds $62 billion. Despite decades of protocols, alerts, and education, the burden remains stubbornly high.
Sepsis Is Hard Because Humans Are Different
Sepsis continues to evade early detection because it does not behave like a single disease. It presents differently across patients, ages, and biological profiles, often mimicking other conditions. Detection protocols frequently rely on manual analysis and rapid decision-making in already chaotic clinical settings.
As Carver explained, “Infections impact us all differently. How YOUR body responds to infection is very different than how MY body responds to infection. Those differences are what makes it difficult for clinicians.”
That variability becomes even more problematic when patients arrive later and sicker in emergency departments after attempting to manage symptoms at home. “All of these compounding factors make it hard for providers to discern who’s septic or who’s going to be septic in the next 24 hours,” Carver said. In crowded emergency departments, the margin for error narrows quickly. “You have to assess a patient very rapidly and you need to make decisions very rapidly.”
Precision Means Letting Biology Speak for the Individual
Rather than flagging broad symptom patterns, Prenosis built its sepsis approach around how an individual patient’s biology changes over time. That focus on immune response is intentional. “That difference in the biological response is the thing that differentiates Prenosis. It’s our special sauce,” Carver said.
The company studied how biology evolves during hospitalization across tens of thousands of patients, observing how treatment, testing, and interventions themselves influence immune signals. “We’ve studied their biology and how their biology changes over their hospitalization… in about 30,000 patients,” she explained. From that work emerged the Sepsis ImmunoScore
, which “takes 22 input parameters and calculates the patient’s likelihood of sepsis now or in the next 24 hours.”
This approach reflects a more mature phase of healthcare AI, one centered on narrow use cases, regulatory rigor, and clinical trust. “We took that data and we created a machine learning AI model to diagnose sepsis or the progression to sepsis,” Carver said, noting that it is “the first-ever FDA authorized AI diagnostic for sepsis and the prediction of adverse outcomes.”
The intent is not automation for its own sake. “We’re trying to augment the decision making for providers. Certainly not take it away,” she said. In real-world evaluations, that focus showed measurable impact. With Prenosis, “provider decision making could be improved by almost 15%.”
From Broad Alerts to Biological Signal
Sepsis detection is shifting away from blanket screening and toward biologically grounded insight. We not only need speed, but specificity, especially in clinical environments saturated with alerts, overlapping priorities, and numerous protocols.
As Carver described it, the work centers on “augmented intelligence for sepsis diagnosis,” where technology helps clinicians see clearer signals rather than louder ones.
Learn more about Prenosis at https://prenosis.com/
Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.
And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.
Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.
Sepsis has been a known threat for decades, yet it still slips past clinicians every day. The problem is not awareness or organizational will. It is variability, speed, and signal overload. In busy care environments, early warning systems often cast too wide a net, forcing clinicians to choose between missing risk and chasing noise.
Why Sepsis Detection Still Breaks Down at the Point of Care
At the annual IHI Forum, Robin Carver, Senior Vice President of Commercialization at Prenosis, unpacked why sepsis remains so difficult to diagnose and how precision diagnostics and narrowly focused AI could change what early detection of sepsis looks like.
Key Takeaways
- Sepsis remains a challenging problem in healthcare. Addressing it effectively requires aligning clinical judgment, standardized processes, and more precise technology—rather than relying on any single solution.
- Prenosis’ approach to sepsis accounts for biological individuality. By focusing on personalized immune response rather than broad population thresholds, the approach aims to give clinicians clearer, more actionable insight into sepsis risk.
The Deadly Toll of Sepsis
The CDC defines Sepsis as the body’s extreme response to an infection. It is a life-threatening medical emergency that occurs when an infection triggers a chain reaction throughout the body.
According to the Sepsis Alliance, Sepsis is the leading cause of death in US hospitals. responsible for over 350,000 deaths each year, roughly one every 90 seconds. The estimated annual cost of sepsis care exceeds $62 billion. Despite decades of protocols, alerts, and education, the burden remains stubbornly high.
Sepsis Is Hard Because Humans Are Different
Sepsis continues to evade early detection because it does not behave like a single disease. It presents differently across patients, ages, and biological profiles, often mimicking other conditions. Detection protocols frequently rely on manual analysis and rapid decision-making in already chaotic clinical settings.
As Carver explained, “Infections impact us all differently. How YOUR body responds to infection is very different than how MY body responds to infection. Those differences are what makes it difficult for clinicians.”
That variability becomes even more problematic when patients arrive later and sicker in emergency departments after attempting to manage symptoms at home. “All of these compounding factors make it hard for providers to discern who’s septic or who’s going to be septic in the next 24 hours,” Carver said. In crowded emergency departments, the margin for error narrows quickly. “You have to assess a patient very rapidly and you need to make decisions very rapidly.”
Precision Means Letting Biology Speak for the Individual
Rather than flagging broad symptom patterns, Prenosis built its sepsis approach around how an individual patient’s biology changes over time. That focus on immune response is intentional. “That difference in the biological response is the thing that differentiates Prenosis. It’s our special sauce,” Carver said.
The company studied how biology evolves during hospitalization across tens of thousands of patients, observing how treatment, testing, and interventions themselves influence immune signals. “We’ve studied their biology and how their biology changes over their hospitalization… in about 30,000 patients,” she explained. From that work emerged the Sepsis ImmunoScore, which “takes 22 input parameters and calculates the patient’s likelihood of sepsis now or in the next 24 hours.”
This approach reflects a more mature phase of healthcare AI, one centered on narrow use cases, regulatory rigor, and clinical trust. “We took that data and we created a machine learning AI model to diagnose sepsis or the progression to sepsis,” Carver said, noting that it is “the first-ever FDA authorized AI diagnostic for sepsis and the prediction of adverse outcomes.”
The intent is not automation for its own sake. “We’re trying to augment the decision making for providers. Certainly not take it away,” she said. In real-world evaluations, that focus showed measurable impact. With Prenosis, “provider decision making could be improved by almost 15%.”
From Broad Alerts to Biological Signal
Sepsis detection is shifting away from blanket screening and toward biologically grounded insight. We not only need speed, but specificity, especially in clinical environments saturated with alerts, overlapping priorities, and numerous protocols.
As Carver described it, the work centers on “augmented intelligence for sepsis diagnosis,” where technology helps clinicians see clearer signals rather than louder ones.
Learn more about Prenosis at https://prenosis.com/
Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.
And for an exclusive look at our top stories, subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube.
Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.
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2026-01-13 21:30
Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Healthcare Central is published from a syndicated feed.
