AI-Powered Early Detection of Sepsis in Emergency Medicine

Sepsis remains a critical medical emergency caused by a dysregulated immune response to infection, with timely detection and intervention being essential for improving survival rates. Traditional methods often rely on clinician intuition and structured scoring systems, which may be time-intensive and prone to variability. To address these limitations, Machine Learning (ML) offers a powerful alternative, bringing precision and efficiency to sepsis detection. This study investigates both white-box and complex black-box ML models applied to patient data collected across the continuum of care, including monitoring at the urgent care, en route in ambulances, and diagnostics conducted within hospital emergency department settings themselves. White-box models, such as logistic regression and decision trees, are valued for their interpretability, allowing healthcare providers to understand and trust the reasoning behind predictions. Meanwhile, black-box models like deep neural networks and support vector machines deliver superior accuracy but pose challenges in clinical transparency. This trade-off between explainability and performance is explored in detail, supported by experimental results aimed at identifying the most effective computational strategies for early sepsis recognition across diverse healthcare environments.