Artificial intelligence (AI) healthcare firm Prenosis on Wednesday announced that it has been awarded a $749,000 federal contract to support an implementation study at three hospitals aimed at assessing the clinical utility of Sepsis ImmunoScore, a digital diagnostic tool.
The study will aim to evaluate the tool’s ability to assist with clinical decisions and improve patient outcomes.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) awarded the contract.
Early identification of patients at risk of sepsis enables medical interventions that may improve patient outcomes and save lives. However, the medical community is often challenged in attempts to quickly identify patients with sepsis and get them on the most effective antibiotic. Numerous companies, as a result, are developing in vitro diagnostic tests to help with these diagnoses.
Prenosis, being one of these firms, intends to enter the market for sepsis diagnostic testing. It has a large, rapidly growing dataset and biobank from patients with sepsis and other infections. Leveraging the dataset and AI/machine learning techniques, the Chicago-based firm is developing the Sepsis ImmunoScore, a pathogen-agnostic, host-based digital tool that uses clinical parameters and protein biomarkers to assess a patient's risk of sepsis within 24 hours.
In a hospital environment, the tool integrates seamlessly into clinical workflows, Prenosis said. After a patient enters a hospital or emergency department, a physician suspecting an infection orders a test using Sepsis ImmunoScore. The score appears on a screen in the electronic medical record (EMR) and, according to Prenosis, provide insights that enable optimized and personalized patient care.
Prenosis noted that it developed its core resource, a large dataset and biobank for infection in acute care, in partnership with U.S. hospitals. The platform combines biomarker and clinical data for patients suspected of infection and leverages more than 70,000 plasma or serum samples from more than 17,000 patients. With it, the company generates biological profiles of each patient by measuring critical sepsis biomarkers in a Biological Safety Level 2 lab in Chicago. Prenosis also curates a dataset of dense time series data from patients' electronic medical records, including demographics, vital signs, lab results, interventions, outcomes, and other parameters.
The firm said that its total funding to date is $20 million.