AgileMD vs Epic Sepsis Model (2026)
Both watch hospitalized patients and alert clinicians before they deteriorate, and they reach the hospital differently. AgileMD sells eCART, an early warning system for ward deterioration built on University of Chicago research: a cloud hosted gradient boosted model that combines routine vital signs and laboratory values from the EHR. It is FDA cleared, and it markets within its clearance. The Epic Sepsis Model is built into Epic's record: it scores adult emergency and hospitalized patients every 15 minutes and alerts when a score crosses the threshold each health system sets. Epic states no regulatory position for it, and outside researchers have revalidated it on their own data. Choose eCART for a cleared, general deterioration warning; choose the Epic model if you run Epic and will set and monitor the threshold yourself.
- You want a deterioration warning that is FDA cleared and marketed within its clearance.
- The warning should cover general ward deterioration, not sepsis alone.
- The clearance should state sensitivity and alert rate.
- Your hospital runs Epic and wants the model already in the record.
- Your team will set the alert threshold and monitor it.
- Independent revalidation on other hospitals' data matters to your committee.
This comparison is published by AI Health Index, an independent research platform that compares healthcare AI vendors objectively. AgileMD and Epic Sepsis Model are each graded against the same capability taxonomy, from each vendor's own public materials and the regulatory record, under the AI Health Index verification standard. No vendor pays for placement, and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Plain facts
| Fact | AgileMD | Epic Sepsis Model |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | Inpatient Deterioration & Risk Monitoring | Inpatient Deterioration & Risk Monitoring |
| Founded | 2011 | 1979 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Verona, Wisconsin, United States |
| Website | agilemd.com | epic.com |
Side by Side
Select any grade to read the note behind it.
Each vendor in one paragraph
Written to be quoted whole. Each paragraph opens the AI Health Index profile of the vendor: what the product is, who buys it and what it does.
AgileMD sells eCART, an FDA cleared early warning system for clinical deterioration on hospital wards, built on research from the University of Chicago, and a separate clinical pathways product.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
The Epic Sepsis Model is the sepsis prediction model built into Epic's electronic health record. It scores adult emergency and hospitalized patients every 15 minutes and alerts clinicians when a score crosses the threshold each health system sets. Version 1 (2018) was a penalized logistic regression.
Source: AI Health Index, September 2026
Questions buyers ask
How do AgileMD and Epic Sepsis Model work with the EHR?
For AgileMD, the company says eCART and its pathways embed in native EHR workflows, and that pathways let clinicians order directly, align order sets, pull in live labs and vitals, generate documentation and use calculators. The 510(k) says the health system must supply an EHR connection and data interfaces.
The model reads vital signs, laboratory results, medication administration and other chart data directly from Epic every 15 minutes and returns its score and alerts into the clinician's workflow, with no interface or data feed to build. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 29, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How are AgileMD and Epic Sepsis Model priced and sold?
In AgileMD's case, the company has also published a conference abstract measuring the return on investment of the product (Circulation, 2023) and markets reduced mortality, length of stay and direct variable costs, so the benefit side is quantified while the cost side is not.
The model is available only to Epic customers, inside Epic, and is switched on by the health system; the Wong paper records Epic's figure of 95 organizations on version 2 and more than 100 still on version 1 in August 2025. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 29, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How do AgileMD and Epic Sepsis Model handle patient data?
With AgileMD, the home page says the cloud engine is SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant, hosted with no on site hardware, behind layers of protection, encryption and network security, with audit logging and monitoring. Nothing published states how long patient data is kept, whether it trains or updates the model, or how it is de-identified.
The model runs inside the health system's Epic environment and each site fine-tunes version 2 on its own historical inpatient data, as the independent validations describe the deployment, so no third party model provider receives patient data. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 29, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which settings and specialties do AgileMD and Epic Sepsis Model cover?
For AgileMD, the company lists a pediatric machine learning early warning outcome study (Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, 2025) among its eCART publications without saying whether a pediatric version is offered, and its home page says the model was trained and tested on 28 hospitals across six health systems, a wider base than the clearance describes.
With Epic Sepsis Model, coverage is adults only, with no pediatric model. Performance varies widely by site, so the validated settings show where the model has been tested, not how it will perform at a new hospital. From the AI Health Index, drawn from each vendor's own published materials and the regulatory record, verified September 29, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Related comparisons
Other published head to head assessments involving these vendors or their closest peers. The full set for this category is on the Inpatient Deterioration & Risk Monitoring page.
Both records were reviewed on this site in September 2026. Neither publishes a price. Epic states no regulatory position for the model, though FDA's guidance places software that predicts sepsis and alerts a clinician under device oversight, and alert burden is left for each hospital to measure. AgileMD's marketing calls eCART best in class without a comparison.
Ask both for sensitivity, lead time and alerts per patient day from the same study.