Shannon Flynn is a freelance blogger who covers education technologies, cybersecurity and IoT topics. You can follow Shannon on Muck Rack or Medium to read more of her articles. Artificial intelligence (AI) has had major impacts in the health care industry, affecting providers and patients alike. However, it also aids the pharmaceutical sector in finding and creating the drugs that support health care through the treatment and management of diseases. Here's a closer look at some positive changes AI could bring this year.

Discussions about the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare often span multiple areas, most commonly about making more accurate diagnoses, identifying at-risk populations, and better understanding how individual patients will respond to medicines and treatment protocols. To date, there has been relatively little discussion about practical applications of AI to improve medication management across the care continuum, an area this article will address. What's the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions prescription drugs in the United States? In poll after poll, the high and rising costs of medications are American voters' top healthcare-related issue. This concern is well founded.

The news that Ascension and Google are working together on a system using machine learning, called Project Nightingale, at first seems like a step forward toward better patient care. Because it's challenging for any healthcare provider to exchange information about patients and patient care, it only makes sense that the healthcare industry would look for technology solutions that could solve some of these obstacles. The design of a new software system that could suggest changes in care and make medical records easily accessible to any doctor treating a single patient would help alleviate many of the challenges our healthcare system faces today. However, it's important that these two entities move through the process with great care and consideration. Google is no stranger to controversy regarding data privacy, machine learning and ethics.

Hospitals and health systems throughout the country are constantly looking for ways to streamline finances and fine tune operating margins. Many are now looking outside the box for solutions to help increase their operating revenue and combat the continued pressure to stretch budgets to include data security, attracting top talent and facility upgrades. Artificial Intelligence (AI), as an example, is showing promising results in healthcare to more effectively address revenue cycle inefficiencies. AI has penetrated nearly every touchpoint in medicine, from the way emergency medical technicians (EMTs) are dispatched to assisting physicians during surgery. AI is enabling smart devices to detect cancer or a stroke, and consumers can even get help to quit smoking or address opioid addictions with the help of AI. So, it was only a matter of time to apply AI to tackle health revenue cycle inefficiencies.

Artificial intelligence is a topic that should interest us all, as it changes the world with every second. And the healthcare system is one of the areas that AI has already started to revolutionize. These are the main ways in which that is happening. Due to the introduction of personalized diagnosis and precision medicine, now doctors can treat a patient's condition, by taking into account his/her background, as opposed to merely treating the disease. This is accomplished by using proteomics, which is a type of DNA mapping, as well as advanced AI machine learning. Occam's Razor is also known as the Law of Parsimony, and it refers to providing a range of solutions to a given problem.