Sepsis is a serious medical condition characterized by an inflammatory response to an infection that can affect the whole body. The patient may develop an inflammatory response to microbes in their blood, urine, lungs, skin, or other tissues. Sepsis is a serious condition with a very high death rate if left untreated. Most sepsis patients require antibiotics and admission to an intensive care unit (ICU). How soon broad spectrum antibiotics should be delivered is as yet unclear. Broad spectrum antimicrobial treatment is defined as a combination of antibiotics which act against a wide range of disease-causing bacteria, used to reduce mortality rates in patients with sepsis, severe sepsis or septic shock. We carried out a systematic review of the literature by searching key databases for high quality published and unpublished material on the timing of antibiotics in the emergency department prior to ICU admission. Our searches revealed no randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the timing of broad spectrum antibiotic treatment in this population. We conclude that there is a need to carry out observational cohort studies, in the absence of RCTs, even if they lack the precision of RCTs. We also conclude that the earlier the antibiotics are administered the better. It is important to realize that the clock starts ticking when the patient arrives in the ED and stops once the antibiotic is started. The pre-intensive care unit period is the time spent in the ward or ED prior to being admitted to the ICU, where most patients with severe sepsis are admitted. The review was purposefully very specific as it is focused only on patients with severe sepsis and in finding only RCTs. The absence of these may imply, in itself, the complicated nature of the study question as it may be ethically wrong to randomize such patients to a seemingly inferior treatment arm.