Sentara Health Pilots AI Clinical Decision Support in Primary Care

Sentara Health Pilots AI Clinical Decision Support in Primary Care

Sentara Health is launching a pilot program that moves beyond administrative AI automation to test artificial intelligence-powered clinical recommendations directly within primary care workflows. The Virginia-based health system is partnering with GW RhythmX to deploy an AI platform that provides patient-specific clinical guidance at the point of care.

The 90-day pilot will begin with 30 physicians and advanced practice providers working in family and internal medicine across two markets, according to details first reported by Fierce Healthcare.

Why it matters

As primary care demand grows while clinician capacity remains constrained, health systems are searching for technology solutions that go beyond documentation relief. This pilot represents a shift toward AI that actively supports clinical decision-making rather than simply reducing paperwork—testing whether machine intelligence can help providers manage more complex patients without increasing cognitive load or requiring specialist referrals.

Testing AI within care model redesign

The pilot is embedded within Sentara's broader strategy to shift toward a technology-enabled, team-based ambulatory care model. Prasanna Mohanty, executive vice president and president for ambulatory care at Sentara, said the initiative addresses a fundamental question: how to give clinicians greater capacity to care for aging, increasingly complex populations.

"We're looking at RhythmX AI to augment that model by reducing not only administrative burden but the cognitive burden," Mohanty told Fierce Healthcare.

Sentara Health operates 12 hospitals and more than 400 sites of care in Virginia and Northeast North Carolina, generating $14.2 billion in operating revenue in 2025. The system employs approximately 473 primary care physicians and advanced practice providers at Sentara Medical Group.

How the precision care platform works

GW RhythmX's platform analyzes patient history, evidence-based guidelines, care gaps, social and financial determinants, payer requirements, and formulary considerations to generate personalized recommendations during patient encounters. The system provides specific next-best-action decision support rather than general suggestions.

Deepthi Bathina, CEO and founder of GW RhythmX, said the platform bridges the gap between care model strategy and execution by delivering intelligence to clinicians at the right moment. The company was formed through a 2025 merger of RhythmX AI and Get Well.

The platform displays complete data provenance and reasoning behind recommendations, allowing clinicians to assess the AI's logic within seconds, according to company executives.

Measured approach to deployment

"We want to learn first before we scale," Mohanty said. Sentara will evaluate clinician interaction patterns, adoption rates, recommendation usefulness, and workflow integration before considering broader rollout.

The health system will run a control group using existing Sentara tools alongside the AI pilot, allowing separate analysis of each intervention's impact. A parallel pilot of Sentara's team-care model redesign will also proceed, with plans to integrate both initiatives during scaling.

Mohanty said the evaluation will assess whether the technology helps teams manage complex patients, reduces unnecessary specialist referrals, and demonstrates sufficient value for wider deployment.

Early evidence from other deployments

New Mexico-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services deployed the GW RhythmX platform in December and has since expanded it to 200 primary care physicians. Presbyterian reported the platform delivered 17,000 hyper-personalized treatment responses and reduced manual data hunting time for clinicians.

An internal study at Presbyterian evaluated 1,100 patients over six months and validated that the platform's clinical intelligence supported $1.1 million in condition capture through adjudicated claims.

GW RhythmX's solutions are currently deployed across more than 150 health systems, reaching over 85 million patients. The company has completed more than 170,000 physician-reviewed clinical validations and is expanding to specialties including cardiology, endocrinology, and inpatient care.

Details of the Sentara Health pilot were first reported by Fierce Healthcare.