Big data to the rescue of systemic inflammatory response syndrome: is electronic data mining the way of the future?

The recognition and accurate diagnosis of sepsis continues to stifle clinicians and researchers alike, as evidenced in part by the recently proposed and ever-evolving clinical definitions (1). Based on available data, global estimates of the burden of sepsis are at 31.5 million cases annually with mortality rates around 20% (2,3). Despite decades of research, clinically efficacious therapies remain elusive. To aid the efforts of researchers and clinicians, the ACCP/ SCCM consensus conference in 1992 proposed a set of standard definitions, which have since come to be the cornerstone of clinical sepsis research and influenced clinical practice—enter the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria (4).