TIIM Healthcare, an AI-based health technology company in Singapore, has received an exclusive IP license to commercialize new technology developed by Duke-NUS Medical School to identify patients at risk of dying from sepsis.
Founded in 2016, TIIM, which stands for Technology Innovation in Medicine, develops AI triage solutions. Its flagship product, aiTRIAGE, integrates both heart rate variability and common vital signs to identify patients at risk for major adverse cardiac events.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT
Duke-NUS technology adopts a new scoring system, which also uses HRV, HRnV, vital signs and rapid sequential organ failure assessment to predict in-hospital mortality in patients with sepsis in emergency services. The solution does not require blood tests and can provide risk assessment results in 10 minutes, allowing it to be used for ongoing monitoring of mortality risk in patients with sepsis.
The technology was developed using data obtained from around 340 patients with sepsis in the emergency department of Singapore General Hospital. Based on a study published last year in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, its predictive model outperformed existing sepsis risk scoring models.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT
Every year, sepsis affects more than 50 million people worldwide, resulting in approximately five million deaths in adults and children. In Singapore, sepsis due to pneumonia and urinary tract infection claimed almost 5,000 lives in 2019 alone.
Currently, performing a blood test is the most accurate way to assess a patient’s risk of death from sepsis. However, the results can take two to four hours, which could delay the administration of an appropriate treatment.
“Early risk stratification in septic patients using a rapid and effective triage tool would be of great value in the emergency department,” said Professor Marcus Ong, director of the Services Research Program and Health Systems at Duke-NUS Medical School and lead author of the study. With new sepsis triage technology, emergency departments can effectively redirect limited but necessary hospital resources to prevent high-risk patients from experiencing septic shock.
Meanwhile, TIIM Healthcare plans to integrate the new technology into its platform to also help increase the accuracy and analytical capabilities of clinicians to triage septic patients.
MARKET OVERVIEW
In Australia, AI has also been applied to develop a tool that can quickly assess the severity and mortality risk of sepsis patients. Developed by eHealth NSW, the AI-powered sepsis risk tool was trained using historical patient data to provide a risk score for sepsis patients. More recently, the Westmead Hospital began piloting the technology in its emergency room waiting rooms.