The Impact of AI on Healthcare
With Peter Micca, Eleven Canterbury Consultant & Healthcare Technology Expert, and Dan Martin, Eleven Canterbury Program & Relationship Manager
Summary
How will AI change healthcare, and why hasn’t technology lowered costs the way it has in other industries?
In this conversation, Peter Micca, healthcare technology investor and Managing Partner at Caduceus Capital Partners, explains why healthcare does not operate like a typical market—and what that means for AI adoption, cost, and outcomes.
The discussion focuses on the forces that continue to drive cost growth, even as technology improves.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- Why healthcare does not behave like a traditional consumer market
- Why costs continue to rise as technology advances
- How supply-driven demand sustains higher spending
- Why AI can improve outcomes without reducing costs in the near term
- Why trust slows adoption more than technical capability
- How telehealth and remote monitoring are changing where care happens
- Why early adoption often increases cost before it reduces it
- How physicians will use AI to support clinical judgment, not replace it
Peter identifies a core constraint: the technology to improve diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring already exists, but adoption moves at the pace of trust, reimbursement, and clinical risk.
In the near term, AI adds cost and complexity. Over time, it changes how care is delivered, how decisions are made, and where efficiency is possible.
For healthcare leaders, investors, and advisors, this is a clear view of where AI is working today.
About the series:
“Conversations With the Experts” features industry leaders sharing practical insight from the front lines of business, technology, and transformation.
To work with an Eleven Canterbury expert: clientservices@elevencanterbury.com
Transcript
Dan Martin: We’re talking about healthcare and healthcare innovation with Peter Micca today. He’s a former senior managing partner at Deloitte and serves on several boards in that sector. He is the Managing Partner of Caduceus Capital Partners, which invests in healthcare innovation.
Healthcare seems to be unlike anything else people buy. You assume that someone else is paying or that you have already paid for it, and you are unwilling to accept anything but the best. I may not buy the largest house in the world because I can’t afford it. But with healthcare, I want the best. The whole system seems designed to make the costs, expenses, and outcomes somewhat opaque. So, I it strikes me, we have a recipe for runaway costs, looking at this as an outsider who knows nothing or is this really what’s happening?
Peter Micca: Dan, thank you for the opportunity to join you. I’ve always admired what Eleven Canterbury does from afar in terms of providing expert talent across all industries.
At Caduceus Capital, we invest in healthcare innovation. We believe that it takes more than just capital to accelerate companies and healthcare, to your point, does not behave like a consumer product. The industry is really geared toward providing or trying to provide outcomes. But the reality is, it doesn’t behave like a consumer product. People, when they’re sick, want to feel better. They don’t necessarily price shop.
In an environment where we produce more supply of healthcare almost every day, the more healthcare we provide in terms of technology, services, and innovation, the more people want. And so as complicated as healthcare is, it’s really about two simple things.
One, how much healthcare do you want? Most people will say, I want whatever exists. I want to feel better. Who’s going to pay for it? Most Americans would say, ” Look, I’ve already paid for it. I have a social contract when I pay my insurance premium, and the fact that the ecosystem creates more supply every day, that’s not my problem, right?
And so, in a world where the more you create, the more people want, the only true way to bend the cost curve and create better outcomes is either to ration healthcare, which has proven just not to be socially acceptable in this country, or other countries practice that. Or, innovation technology, bring the healthcare closer to the consumer and away from more expensive brick and mortar complexes, and create better outcomes.
A big part of our investment thesis at Caduceus is just that. We believe that ultimately, healthcare will move closer to the consumer and use technology in more innovative ways to help create better outcomes.
Dan Martin: Can technology be accepted rapidly in the healthcare space?
I think in some spaces you have some really rapid changes. We had a person I talked to in one of these conversations, and he had a picture of Fifth Avenue in New York in 1903, all horses, one car. Fifth Avenue in New York, 1909, all cars, one horse. A massive change in a really short period of time.
Can we do that in healthcare? Are there things that you can do that make a real difference in a short amount of time? Or is there a lot of friction or inertia in the system?
Peter Micca: Again, healthcare does not behave like normal technology products. Most industries that adopt some form of accelerated technology result in better outcomes and lower costs almost immediately.
Healthcare takes time. There’s a third-party payer system, and there’s a consumer product. In fact, short-term technology and innovation can actually increase the cost of healthcare as it creates layers of review and technology that didn’t previously exist. But I think, over time, the system has proven it can lead to better outcomes.
I think that when you look back a number of years, there are a whole host of therapies and therapeutic classes that didn’t exist 10, 20, or 30 years ago that are leading to better lives and better outcomes. But it takes time, largely because the consumer adoption curve is longer than that of consumer products.
Dan Martin: I think when people are thinking about their health, they want to be very, very careful. It reminds me, I was flying, and there was a very old lady in front of me who was afraid of flying. She had never flown. And the pilot explained to her very nicely that the airplane was perfectly safe. They had a computer that helped him fly the airplane. When we landed in Chicago, as we were walking out, the flight attendant asked the pilot how the flight went, and he said everything was perfect, except that the computer had broken on the way in, and he had to fly it himself. The little old lady heard that as she walked out of the airplane.
So we make a difference in the innovation. You said it’s a little bit slow, but what does it do to the costs? Are there innovations that can impact the cost, reduce the cost of what you’re providing?
Peter Micca: Yeah, we believe all the costs, particularly some of the more innovative remote patient monitoring techniques, allow for the adoption of telehealth in a way that didn’t before. So, there’s a whole host of ways that technology will bend the cost curve. But the reality is that the time it takes for people to accept and adopt technology for their personal use in healthcare requires trust.
The technology currently exists. So, from an agentic AI perspective, to review certain therapies to assess outcomes, but most people, in the short term, won’t trust that. Think of yourself: if someone ran an agentic AI program against the particular ailment you had and suggested immediate surgery within the next 24 hours, your first reaction would be to get a second opinion, maybe even a third. Right? So in the short term, in that particular scenario, the cost structure actually went up.
I think, ultimately, physicians will use emerging technologies to create better outcomes, enabling them to have the information and data they need to prescribe and develop therapies that help people and lower costs. But it’s going to take trust, and it’s going to take time.
Dan Martin: You’re relatively optimistic that it will get better, and it may take time. Are there particular areas that you’re focused on? Is it in the AI space? Where are you focused?
Peter Micca: Almost every organization today is using AI to create a better customer experience, lower cost, and create better outcomes across every industry. AI is an emerging technology, unlike others. But history has proven a whole series of adoption of technologies to do that across all industries. And that will be the same for healthcare over the next decade as well. And so that’s our postulate and thesis around investing in the industry.
Dan Martin: It is a very exciting area. A huge opportunity to make a big difference. I really appreciate the time you’ve spent sharing this with me, and I look forward to your success and to hearing more. Thank you very much, Peter.
Peter Micca: Thank you. Dan.
