TIIM Healthcare, an AI health technology company in Singapore, has received an exclusive IP license to commercialise a novel technology developed by the Duke-NUS Medical School to identify patients at risk of dying from sepsis.

Established in 2016, TIIM, which stands for Technology Innovation in Medicine, develops AI triaging solutions. Its flagship product, aiTRIAGE, incorporates both heart rate variability and common vital signs to identify patients who are at risk of major adverse cardiac events.

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

The Duke-NUS technology adopts a novel scoring system, which also uses HRV, HRnV, vital signs and quick sequential organ failure assessment to predict in-hospital mortality among sepsis patients in the emergency ward. The solution does not require blood tests and it can deliver risk assessment results within 10 minutes – making it possible to be used for continuous monitoring of mortality risk among warded sepsis patients. 

The technology was developed using data obtained from about 340 sepsis patients at Singapore General Hospital's emergency department. Based on a study published last year in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, its predictive model outperformed existing sepsis risk scoring models.

WHY IT MATTERS

Every year, sepsis affects over 50 million people worldwide, resulting in about five million deaths in both adult and child populations. In Singapore, sepsis from pneumonia and urinary tract infection claimed nearly 5,000 deaths in 2019 alone. 

Currently, conducting a blood test is the most accurate way to assess a patient's mortality risk from sepsis. However, results may take two to four hours, which could delay the delivery of appropriate treatment. 

"Early risk stratification in septic patients using a quick and efficient triage tool would have great value in the emergency department," said Professor Marcus Ong, director of the Health Services & Systems Research Programme at Duke-NUS Medical School and the senior author of the study. Using the novel sepsis triaging tech, EDs can efficiently redirect limited but necessary hospital resources to prevent high-risk patients from going into septic shock.

Meanwhile, TIIM Healthcare plans to integrate the novel technology into its platform to also help augment the accuracy and analytical capabilities of clinicians to triage septic patients. 

MARKET SNAPSHOT

In Australia, AI has also been applied to develop a tool that can quickly assess the severity and mortality risk of patients with sepsis. Developed by eHealth NSW, the AI-powered sepsis risk tool was trained using historic patient data to provide a risk score to septic patients. Most recently, the Westmead Hospital started to pilot the technology in its ED waiting rooms.