The North Carolina Collaborative Health AI Network (NC CHAIN) has received a $4.4 million, three-year grant from The Duke Endowment to help rural and resource-limited clinics and hospitals safely and effectively use health-related AI tools.

Lee H. Roberts, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that AI has “tremendous potential to improve healthcare, and we want more patients and providers to benefit from that progress.”

NC CHAIN will share tools and resources from larger healthcare institutions and adapt them through collaboration with rural and critical-access providers. David McSwain, a principal investigator at NC CHAIN, said that “expansion of the digital divide is a very real and poorly addressed risk of the rapid growth of AI in healthcare.”

The network aims to support health systems, community clinics, critical access hospitals, and other healthcare organizations as they navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape.