Sepsis, one of medicine's most time-sensitive killers, has long outpaced the systems designed to catch it — but a team of Australian clinicians may have found a way to close that gap. NSW Health's SAFE-WAIT model uses artificial intelligence to identify sepsis risk in emergency waiting rooms before traditional tests can, flagging vulnerable patients through a simple traffic-light system that guides nurses toward faster intervention. Piloted at Westmead Hospital in 2024, the tool delivered antibiotics to at-risk patients an average of 83 minutes sooner than standard protocols, a margin that in
NSW AI tool cuts sepsis detection time by 83 minutes, expanding to five hospitals
Sepsis is associated with one in five deaths worldwide; early detection via this tool aims to reduce mortality through faster treatment initiation.