Healthcare providers across North Carolina are forming a new statewide partnership to close the gap in artificial intelligence adoption and sustainability in medical settings. The project will help people in every corner of the state get the high-quality care they deserve.
This new effort, called the North Carolina Collaborative Health AI Network (NC CHAIN), just received a three-year, $4.4 million grant from The Duke Endowment. With this support, the program will help rural and resource-limited clinics and hospitals learn about, select, and safely implement AI tools to improve patient care.
“Carolina’s mission reaches every part of North Carolina, and partnerships like this are an important way we serve the state,” said Lee H. Roberts, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Artificial intelligence has tremendous potential to improve healthcare, and we want more patients and providers to benefit from that progress. This initiative will help turn that potential into practical tools that strengthen care. We are grateful to The Duke Endowment and our collaborative partners for making this effort possible.”
Healthcare providers have used AI for many years to support patient care. Doctors use AI to help identify concerns and choose recovery paths. Staff use AI for administrative tasks and scheduling to streamline care. These uses benefit patients because teams can spend more time directly caring for each patient and less time on research and administrative work.
But not every clinic or hospital in North Carolina has the resources to select, implement, and use these tools safely and effectively on their own. The NC CHAIN team wants to change that by building a statewide network that helps close the digital gap in healthcare.
"Expansion of the digital divide is a very real and poorly addressed risk of the rapid growth of AI in healthcare," said Dr. David McSwain '01 (MPH), '02 (MD), principal investigator of NC CHAIN and chief medical informatics officer at UNC Health. "This funding from The Duke Endowment lays the foundation for a statewide support infrastructure that leverages the immense digital health expertise of partners across North Carolina.”
The NC CHAIN community will include providers from health systems, community clinics, critical access hospitals, and other healthcare organizations who will support each other as they navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
“Large systems like Duke Health and UNC Health have teams of data scientists, compliance officers and informatics experts who can evaluate and govern AI tools. Most rural hospitals and small practices do not,” said Dr. Armando Bedoya, co-investigator for NC CHAIN and chief data and analytics officer at Duke Health.
“NC CHAIN is about taking the responsible AI frameworks we’ve already built and adapting them, along with a support structure, to the clinics and hospitals that are at greatest risk of being left behind," Bedoya said.
The program reflects Carolina’s broader commitment to advancing the responsible use of AI through collaboration, research and shared expertise.
“Adopting AI responsibly takes expertise, shared learning and a clear understanding of how these tools can best support healthcare providers and the patients they serve. Carolina brings established strength in AI literacy and workforce capacity building, and NC CHAIN carries that momentum to healthcare organizations across North Carolina, giving each the practical guidance to adopt AI in ways that fit their own patients and communities," said Saif Khairat, PhD, MPH, chief artificial intelligence officer and vice provost for AI at UNC-Chapel Hill.
NC CHAIN will make it easier for rural, community, and smaller providers to get the expertise and technical support they need. By working together, clinics and hospitals can avoid duplicating work and instead share what they learn, building stronger partnerships across the state.
"Rather than asking every healthcare organization to build the same capabilities independently, NC CHAIN will connect existing expertise and allow participating organizations to share frameworks, vendor evaluations, lessons learned and technical assistance," said McSwain. "Community healthcare organizations will help shape the network and identify the needs NC CHAIN should address. We want healthcare organizations, researchers and partners to see a role for themselves in the network."
McSwain said that collaboration is fundamental to the model. NC CHAIN is intended to complement and connect existing expertise across institutions. "We want potential partners to see and learn about NC CHAIN and say, 'How can I help? I want to be a part of the solution,'" he reflected.
The Duke Endowment is providing foundational philanthropic support to launch the collaboration and begin building the infrastructure needed to support providers across North Carolina.
The network is designed to grow, creating opportunities for more health systems, community providers, researchers and partners to participate.
NC CHAIN brings together partners from UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, UNC Health, Duke Health, the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Duke Margolis Institute and multiple other state organizations.
"This collaborative is designed to scale and add new partners, including other major North Carolina health systems, and ultimately to expand the model to other states,” said Brian Cass, deputy director for data analytics and information technology at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill.
“We're not trying to control how these tools are deployed, but to empower healthcare organizations and practices across North Carolina to leverage their unique expertise in support of our communities," Cass said. "There's nothing quite like it across the country today, and we believe it will establish the national gold standard for true statewide collaboration going forward."
Want to learn more about participating or partnering with NC CHAIN? Please email nc-chain@unc.edu.