{"id":78227,"date":"2026-06-23T10:21:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=78227"},"modified":"2026-06-23T10:21:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:21:02","slug":"ai-health-certificates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/ai-health-certificates\/","title":{"rendered":"Healthcare of the\u00a0present: How AI can help improve health outcomes\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The College of Health and Human Services at Northern Arizona University is accepting applications for two programs that train healthcare workers in the use of AI tools in public and clinical health.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The aim, said program director\u00a0<\/span>Tim Curry<\/span><\/b>, a lecturer in the Department of Health Sciences, is to give healthcare providers the knowledge and skills they need to build AI tools that can gather and analyze the massive amounts of health data already available and use those tools to provide more personalized care to patients and communities.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s not replacing the\u00a0physician;\u00a0it\u2019s allowing you to know more and make a more informed choice,\u201d Curry said. \u201cIt\u2019s allowing us to take the vast amount of data that we have and learn more than we\u2019ve been able to in the past.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The certificates, available at undergraduate and graduate levels, are designed to give students the necessary health,\u00a0analytics\u00a0and coding background to develop and update AI programs and databases that address the problems\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0seeing in their organizations. While the focus is\u00a0largely\u00a0on\u00a0the clinical space and how doctors can help individual patients, Curry also is looking at applications in the public health space.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both programs are fully online,\u00a0accessible\u00a0not only\u00a0to students in Flagstaff and throughout the state\u00a0but also\u00a0to\u00a0working professionals who want\u00a0additional\u00a0education.\u00a0No\u00a0previous\u00a0coding experience is\u00a0required, and students will get support every step of the way to help ensure they develop the\u00a0skills\u00a0they\u2019ll need in a changing healthcare landscape.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve spoken to multiple hospital groups, and they see a need for this,\u201d Curry said. \u201cEmployees need to be up to speed on how these tools work\u00a0and what they can do.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Undergraduate certificate: Applied health analytics (16 credits)<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Students will take courses in applied health analytics and biostatistics as well as classes on coding, hardware and software and SQL\/database use. They\u2019ll partner with the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems on the last three. One goal is for students to\u00a0be fluent in Python when they finish; that\u2019s the most versatile coding language, highly in demand in the job market right now\u00a0and how most AI programming is written.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Python\u2019s possibilities are endless.\u00a0Take cancer, for instance:\u00a0It is, to put it mildly, complicated. Getting the best treatment is critical for surviving and recovering well, but the best treatment\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0a simple formula.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0not just about what kind or stage of cancer a patient has; their age, race, ZIP code, family history and so much more also influence how a cancer can be treated.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So,\u00a0there are dozens of patient variables. Additionally, there are something like 1,000 new journal articles published monthly, one of which might have insight into the\u00a0particular type of cancer\u00a0and patient a doctor has.\u00a0No human has\u00a0time to\u00a0process\u00a0through all of those. AI does. The equation, then, looks something like this: With the right program, a healthcare provider puts all the patient information into the system, which then considers\u00a0all of\u00a0the research available\u00a0and provides treatment recommendations. From there, the patient, the doctor and the whole healthcare team consider those recommendations and make choices.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

AI programs can also help with pattern recognition based on the reams of available data that healthcare providers have been collecting for decades.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn more and apply for the undergraduate certificate.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Graduate certificate:\u00a0AI in Health\u00a0(13 credits)<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Grad students also will take biostats, but at the graduate level,\u00a0and the applied health analytics course, but the Python course will be focused on addressing healthcare problems. The fourth course, called AI in Health, will\u00a0engage\u00a0students at what Curry called the \u201cbleeding edge\u201d of\u00a0topics related to AI application in health fields; students will develop an AI-enabled tool for a problem they see\u00a0for their culminating project in the course. For those students who are working professionals, Curry hopes they will address problems they experience in their work.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The courses will also include\u00a0explorations,\u00a0analysis\u00a0and application work\u00a0on patient privacy,\u00a0including\u00a0HIPAA and GDPR\u00a0regulations; the morality of using AI in\u00a0various ways\u00a0in healthcare, considering the personal data that go\u00a0into the programs; and information security.\u00a0They will\u00a0also\u00a0talk about patients\u2019 rights around their own data and how hospitals are allowed to use that information.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, students will\u00a0explore\u00a0how\u00a0tribal\u00a0and data\u00a0sovereignty\u00a0affect\u00a0the ways\u00a0in which\u00a0healthcare systems\u00a0can use\u00a0patient\u00a0data. For example, Curry said, the information of a patient who lives\u00a0in a tribal nation\u00a0but goes to a hospital in Phoenix\u00a0may\u00a0have\u00a0a different\u00a0set\u00a0of regulations protecting their personal data\u00a0than a non-Native Phoenix resident who goes to the same hospital.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn more and apply for the graduate AI in Health certificate.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Top image: Created by Copilot with this prompt: Can you create an image that shows the use of AI in healthcare? Don’t make it look like a real photo; make it clear it’s a graphic. Perhaps show a doctor and a nurse with a patient and a computer in the room helping to provide information. I then had to ask it to make the doctor a woman and the nurse a man, a good reminder that GenAI still carries a lot of the same biases as humans.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/a>
\n<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The College of Health and Human Services at Northern Arizona University is accepting applications for two programs that train healthcare workers in the use of AI tools in public and clinical health.\u00a0 The aim, said program director\u00a0Tim Curry, a lecturer in the Department of Health Sciences, is to give healthcare providers the knowledge and skills…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2797,"featured_media":78228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2797"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78230,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78227\/revisions\/78230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}