Since 2013, the UNC Center for Health Innovation has come together annually to offer pilot funding for selected project proposals that demonstrate clear dedication to improving patient care, strengthening the healthcare system, and meeting the mission of the center as a whole. Projects that receive funding come from a broad area of interests including:
- Care delivery models
- Health Equity and disparity improvements
- Technology development
- Advanced analytics
- Business models
- Workforce development
- Translational research
This year, five projects were selected from the second-highest number of applications in the award’s history. Of these five selections, two are led by UNC Department of Medicine faculty Carlton Moore, MD, MS, and Cassi Frank, DrPH, MMSc, PA-C, CPPS, respectively.
Dr. Carlton Moore, a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine, will be the PI on a project focusing on an AI-enabled dashboard to help with discharge barrier identification. Oftentimes, patients who are medically ready for discharge experience a longer hospital stay due to unrecognized or poorly tracked discharge barriers. This prolonged stay contributes to increased cost, complications, and reduced hospital capacity. The project will advance an AI enabled dashboard that analyzes both structured EHR data and free-text clinical notes to better identify the barriers to a patient’s discharge. Its goals are to support the earlier intervention of discharge barriers, better resource allocation, and reductions in unnecessary length of stay. Moore will lead this project with his Co-PI Ram Rimal, MS.
Dr. Cassi Frank, a Physician Assistant in the Division of Hematology, will be the PI on a separate project focusing on a system-wide anticoagulation stewardship through Epic-enabled population monitoring. Anticoagulants are among the highest risk medications used in clinical use, yet at UNC Health the management of them has historically been fragmented across specialties. Frank’s project leverages newly available Epic functionality to establish a clinician-facing, anticoagulation stewardship model that supports proactive population monitoring, a standardized workflow, and shared accountability across care settings. It aims to improve identification of high risk anticoagulation scenarios and create sustainable infrastructure for long term patient safety. Frank will be assisted on this project by her Co-PI Aubrie Rafferty, PharmD, BCPS.
The other three 2026 selections, as well as past award recipients, can be found here.