RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Prevalence of electronic screening for sepsis in National Health Service acute hospitals in England JF BMJ Health & Care Informatics JO BMJ Health Care Inform FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd SP e100743 DO 10.1136/bmjhci-2023-100743 VO 30 IS 1 A1 Honeyford, Kate A1 Nwosu, Amen-Patrick A1 Lazzarino, Runa A1 Kinderlerer, Anne A1 Welch, John A1 Brent, Andrew J A1 Cooke, Graham A1 Ghazal, Peter A1 Patil, Shashank A1 , A1 Costelloe, Ceire E YR 2023 UL http://informatics.bmj.com/content/30/1/e100743.abstract AB Sepsis is a worldwide public health problem. Rapid identification is associated with improved patient outcomes—if followed by timely appropriate treatment.Objectives Describe digital sepsis alerts (DSAs) in use in English National Health Service (NHS) acute hospitals.Methods A Freedom of Information request surveyed acute NHS Trusts on their adoption of electronic patient records (EPRs) and DSAs.Results Of the 99 Trusts that responded, 84 had an EPR. Over 20 different EPR system providers were identified as operational in England. The most common providers were Cerner (21%). System C, Dedalus and Allscripts Sunrise were also relatively common (13%, 10% and 7%, respectively). 70% of NHS Trusts with an EPR responded that they had a DSA; most of these use the National Early Warning Score (NEWS2). There was evidence that the EPR provider was related to the DSA algorithm. We found no evidence that Trusts were using EPRs to introduce data driven algorithms or DSAs able to include, for example, pre-existing conditions that may be known to increase risk.Not all Trusts were willing or able to provide details of their EPR or the underlying algorithm.Discussion The majority of NHS Trusts use an EPR of some kind; many use a NEWS2-based DSA in keeping with national guidelines.Conclusion Many English NHS Trusts use DSAs; even those using similar triggers vary and many recreate paper systems. Despite the proliferation of machine learning algorithms being developed to support early detection of sepsis, there is little evidence that these are being used to improve personalised sepsis detection.Data are available on reasonable request. Please contact the DiAlS Team for the information in a spreadsheet format. All data are publicly available on individual NHS Trust’s websites.