VIDEO: Rapid diagnostics, other areas related to sepsis that require further study

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There's many areas related to sepsis that I think require further study, but I'll just highlight three. And the first is we really need better and more rapid diagnostics for infection, including tests that can accurately distinguish bacterial versus a viral vs. fungal infections vs. no infection, identify the precise organism, and for bacteria, rapidly identify their antibiotic resistance profiles.

So this will help us to better distinguish patients who do or do not need antibiotics. And secondly, we need a better understanding of different sepsis phenotypes and immune pathways, as well as biomarkers and clinical algorithms to help us rapidly identify those phenotypes and host response at the bedside.

And this will allow us to better target specific therapies, both in trials and in real-life clinical care. Lastly, I previously mentioned the exciting area of machine learning and artificial intelligence for sepsis diagnosis and early prediction and how we need more clinical implementation studies to evaluate their real-life impact. And that's definitely an important area of research.

There's also some interesting research that's been happening using machine learning and artificial intelligence to guide clinicians to give more tailored sepsis therapy to their specific patient in front of them. For example, specific amounts of fluids or better timing of early vasopressors. And I think this is an exciting field that requires much more exploration and study.