Smart Discharges for Older Children: A Cohort Study to Develop Prognostic Algorithms for Post-discharge Readmission and Mortality Among Children Over 5 Years of Age

This study is an observational multi-country cohort study that aims to build algorithms that can identify children between 5 and 16 years of age admitted for proven or suspected sepsis who are at risk of mortality after they are discharged in East Africa.

In low- and middle-income countries, about 5% of children discharged after hospitalization for sepsis will die in the weeks after returning home. Doctors and parents are often unaware of this period of vulnerability and are poorly equipped to identify or handle this critical situation. This project builds on past work that developed and evaluated models and the Smart Discharges program to predict, during hospitalization, an individual child's risk of recurrent illness and mortality, as well as to provide additional post-discharge support to at-risk children.

Participants will be enrolled from facilities once they are admitted, collecting clinical and social variables. They will then be followed until 6 months post-discharge to understand what happens to them after they return home. This data will be evaluated to identify which variables collected at facilities can be predictive of mortality and recurrent illness after discharge.