News: AI-powered diagnostic test reduces sepsis deaths by 20% at Louisiana hospital

Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, a Louisiana-based hospital, has adopted an AI-driven sepsis diagnostic testing system called IntelliSep, which gained Food and Drug Administration approval in January 2023. The hospital has generated positive results thus far including a reduced cost of care and lower sepsis mortality rate since implementing the diagnosis tool, which determines the presence or absence of sepsis by measuring the activation of a patient's immune system, HealthLeaders reported.

Data for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center show the following positive results:

• The hospital conducted 18,000 less blood cultures in six months than the facility did in a six-month span a year ago
• Since adopting IntelliSep, the hospital has saved nine days of nurse staffing time
• Length of stay for sepsis patients in the ICU has been reduced by two days
• Since adopting IntelliSep, the hospital has reduced sepsis mortality by 20%

Among patients with signs or suspicion of infection, IntelliSep’s cellular host response test achieved similar or better performance compared to other indicators in identifying patients at high risk for sepsis and significantly superior performance in identifying those at low risk, according to a study published in Academic Emergency Medicine this April. The test correctly identified which patients did not have sepsis 98% of the time, and stratified severity of illness.

Editor’s note: To read HealthLeaders’ coverage of this story, click here. To read the related study, click here.