Almost 55,000 Australians develop sepsis each year, and around 8,700 people will die from it. Sepsis affects people of all ages and patients across a broad range of clinical specialties but particularly the very young, the very old and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The condition, which happens when the body has an extreme response to a bacterial or viral infection, causing a chain reaction that can lead to organ failure and death, has had few strategies for treatment. Researchers have now developed a personalised method that can accurately predict which patients with sepsis would recover quickly, recover later, or ultimately succumb to the condition.