It has been said that the practice of medicine is both an art and a science. For example, different patients react differently to the same medication for the treatment of anxiety, and what works for one patient will not work for another. It can be a trial-and-error process to find the correct medication and optimum dosage. Why do side effects to medications or complications to treatments arise in some patients and not others? Every patient is unique, and the art of medicine is the component of the practice that addresses such uniqueness with compassion and care.

The state of value-based reimbursement efforts has been uncertain. Many healthcare organizations are indeed pursuing newer strategies to replace traditional fee-for-service care while reducing costs and improving quality, but progress has often been halting. Still, experts from Cedars-Sinai, CVS Health, Blue Cross NC and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care say they're quite optimistic for the future of value-based care in 2018 and beyond. In the area of health IT, the shift to value-based care is fueling new uses for data and has the potential to reinvigorate the electronic health records that many feared had gone stale, said Scott Weingarten, senior vice president and chief clinical transformation officer at Cedars-Sinai and an innovator in the value-based care space. "I believe that natural language processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence have the potential to significantly improve the interpretation, understanding and usefulness of information documented in the electronic health records and other information sources," Weingarten said.