Army Scientists’ Technique for Early Sepsis Detection in Burn Patients Submitted to FDA

army.mil September 12, 2024

A new invention developed at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command uses an artificial intelligence machine learning algorithm to identify whether burn patients are at risk of experiencing life-threatening complications from sepsis.

The invention has been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for an initial guidance review, a crucial step on the path to readying the device for commercial licensing.

SeptiBurnAlert, invented by Dr. Rasha Hammamieh and Nabarun Chakraborty of the Medical Readiness Systems Biology branch of the Center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience at MRDC’s Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, analyzes blood samples taken from a burn victim to identify the presence of specific biomolecular changes, called biomarkers, that are associated with an elevated risk of dangerous inflammation triggered by the body’s attempts to fight infection.