Team 1 Projects - Sepsis Canada

Team 1 - Population Health, Economics and Policy 

Little is known about the burden of sepsis in Canada. A fundamental factor is the ongoing debate on 'what is sepsis?'. Clinicians struggle to identify it; moreover, clinical identification of infection has a false-positive rate >40%. The various iterations of the consensus definition since the mid 1990s indicate diagnostic uncertainty and evolving conceptualization. Team 1 will work to resolve 4 key issues: (1) uncertainty about the population incidence of sepsis; (2) inadequate knowledge about risk factors and outcomes; (3) heterogeneity and limited accessibility of sepsis datasets distributed throughout the country; and (4) lack of knowledge on the economic consequences of sepsis.  

Projects 1, 2 and 3 create infrastructure to study the clinical epidemiology of sepsis. Project 4 illustrates the value of these core infrastructures, evaluating the links between sepsis, and diabetes and obesity. Project 5 builds infrastructure necessary to understand the societal economic losses attributable to sepsis, and to identify populations in whom interventions would maximize health gains and cost savings for society.