Tech Talk Interviews

Can you start by telling us about your background and what brings you to The AI Summit New York?

JP: My name is JP Li. I've been a serial entrepreneur and investor for over 10 years. I'm Co-Chairman of the board of a company I founded in 2019. We are transforming the future of cancer therapeutic development in both China and the United States through investing and building cancer hospitals as well as investing in the technology space. We would like to try to integrate AI with the disease treatment technology that we're investing in. That's why I'm very excited to be here to meet with like-minded leaders and also to share our perspectives in the area of healthcare AI.

How do you see AI transforming the healthcare industry specifically?

JP: I think AI will eventually permeate every single dimension of all businesses, both domestically and internationally. There is a huge rising capital expenditure and also there's a shortage, for example, of physicians and specialists that exists in the United States and other countries.

Let's say we build an AI enabled wearable device. A physician in New York could track the performance of patients, for example heart rate and other metrics, thousands of miles away. That's one dimension.

I also come from the perspective of the payer side, which is the healthcare provider, the hospital side. There is a huge amount of administrative budget allocated out of revenue for the hospital annually, basically 20, probably 20 to 25%. There's so many ways in which we can try to increase the efficiency of how hospitals operate.

Can you give us a specific example of that inefficiency?

JP: Physicians probably spend at a minimum 20% of their time not treating patients but actually just on administrative duties in the hospital, spending time on different kinds of paperwork. All this data management and informatics management systems are very scattered. If we can somehow create an integrated solution, AI enabled, that integrates all the functionality together, you will create tremendous value in the sense that you'll probably create, at least for large hospital systems on an annual basis, probably 50 to 100 million dollars in savings, could be even more. That's a huge saving.

What about on the pharmaceutical and drug development side?

JP: From the perspective of the fact that we plan on investing in the pharmaceutical sector, a lot of therapeutic technologies in healthcare have to go through the clinical trial process. I think if we can figure out an AI analytics platform in which you will actually optimize the clinical trial patient recruitment and also shorten the whole clinical trial process, it will even predict the success rates of clinical trials. All of which will create tremendous value from the venture capital investing standpoint.

Healthcare startups face unique challenges compared to typical tech startups. What are investors like you looking for when evaluating healthcare AI founders?

JP: Healthcare founders face unique challenges because healthcare is very regulated, especially if you're in some kind of disease treatment or medical device development or developing new drugs that have to go through clinical trials.

Number one, we invest in the people. The makeup of the team is extremely important. Obviously the core technology solution is also extremely important. It has to be that there's no severe flaws that cannot be overcome in terms of core technology itself.

What does an ideal healthcare startup team look like to you?

JP: A lot of times healthcare startups we see are made up of founders with scientific backgrounds, even former professors or current professors, or people holding MD PhD degrees. But what we like to see is, for example, someone who maybe has a PhD or MD from a top university in biomedical science, whatever it may be, but we also like to see, does this person, the CEO or the relevant members on the team, do they actually have relevant experience in terms of creating a regulatory pathway, designing clinical trials, partnering on clinical trials, or where to hold the clinical trials? Very relevant experience.

We would also like to see people involved as part of the management team, maybe more so on the business development side or a little bit on the financial side, whatever it may be, who possess very strong business experience in general. This person may not have a lot of scientific background, but this person has been a serial entrepreneur.

Beyond the team, what else is critical?

JP: It's also very important we like to see a very scalable model. It has to be something that has potential to grow both domestically and internationally on an exponential basis, because it's highly risky to invest in these kinds of companies. We would like to see this kind of potential.

You mentioned you're building a therapeutic technology portfolio. What's your investment focus for your next fund?

JP: AI has been transforming the healthcare industry already and will continue to do so. I'm really excited, particularly because we are creating a portfolio of therapeutic technology via partnerships with different institutions and hospitals here in the United States.

Our focus for our next fund is actually to figure out a pathway by investing in AI driven innovative startups in a sense that it creates a seamless integration of how the company could help us to best design the clinical trials very efficiently. It provides solutions for helping to recruit patients, make that process more efficient. More importantly, you will actually shorten the entire clinical trial process.

How significant is that timeline compression?

JP: In the pharmaceutical sector, it usually takes 10, 12, even 15 years sometimes to go through multiple periods of trials. I think with the integration of AI, we'll probably be able to shorten that by quite a bit.

What does that mean from an investor perspective?

JP: From the investor perspective, in finance we often talk about risk return profile. I feel that the integration of AI will really be able to help us improve the risk return profile. In a lot of life science healthcare companies, there's something called the valley of death, meaning there's a whole period of time, years, where the company is not generating anything because it takes, for example, 10 years to develop a drug that cures cancer.

Once it happens, you have not just the financial value upside for all the stakeholders, but more importantly it creates very strong social value for everyone else.

How else can AI improve the investment decision making process?

JP: AI technology integration could also help potentially to predict the success rates of clinical trials. We'll be able to figure out what is the best timing, what is the best company to get involved with, should we allocate more capital, should we allocate less capital, should we get a strategic partner involved.

You mentioned a second area of focus. Can you elaborate?

JP: The second part is, as I said, coming from the payer, the hospital healthcare provider side, if we can figure out healthcare software platform technology, we have looked at this in the past and will continue to look for solutions that create a seamless flow of patient data management and also help hospitals generate a very efficient process of integrating all the key information. This allows physicians to be able to focus on treating patients without hurting the hospitals in generating any existing or additional revenue.

Clinical trial optimization and process improvements are valuable, but where should founders really focus their attention?

JP: Previously the clinical aspects, optimization, the improvements, fastening the process, all those things are really great. But really, I believe in focusing on what we say in VC, venture capital, which is really who's going to pay for it. What is your marketplace?

What we talk about is that the number one thing for founders to do is to figure out there's a certain gap that exists in the marketplace and work backward in filling that gap. I see that there's a lot of founders who focus on that. I think that's the first step. The second step is we can create a new marketplace for that.

Can you give an example of that marketplace focus?

JP: Coming from the payer, hospital, healthcare provider side, like I said, I think if you can come up with any kind of solution that really helps the hospital to really operate on a very efficient basis and creates all this saving for the hospital, that in itself, the hospital will be sending you purchase orders.

I think that healthcare informatics is really going to be the future. Obviously healthcare informatics could include the clinical trials application to it. Healthcare informatics also includes the medical devices that I just discussed. In general, just try to figure out a way to tie it in with the payer, whoever is signing the check. That's really very important.

What's the one piece of advice you would give founders to stand out?

JP: I try to come from the perspective of fundraising advice, especially for healthcare founders, because as I said, most healthcare startup companies take relatively a little bit longer time just compared to other tech platforms.

I think that it's very important for founders to nurture relationships with investors. You connect with someone on LinkedIn, you meet someone in person. There's nothing wrong in terms of sending or sharing a deck with someone. But my experience, because I've been fundraising my whole life, is that a lot of times people will come back to you after a year, two years and do a deal with you. You just cannot be in a rush.

So it's about playing the long game?

JP: You have to take a long term mindset rather than a short term mindset to really nurture those relationships. Because the VC investor, angel investor, especially at such an early stage, we're investing in the people, we're investing in you. So it's very important at a very early stage that people spend some time getting to know you. As you become more established, you get to the Series A, Series B stage, then that's a little bit different.

Any other advice for founders when it comes to managing investor capital?

JP: Additionally, a little side note, we care about founders who also care about investors' money. The unit economics is also very important. It's not just let's go out there and spend $3 million of a budget doing all this and all that. It has to be justified. You have to have the mindset of knowing and understanding the unit economic aspect. I think that's also very, very important.

What's your overall outlook on healthcare AI investment in 2026 and beyond?

JP: The opportunity is massive. We're at a point where the technology is mature enough to handle real world healthcare complexity, the regulatory environment is beginning to adapt, and the economic incentives are perfectly aligned. Hospitals need cost savings. Pharmaceutical companies need faster development cycles. Patients need better access to specialists and more personalized care.

The investors who win will be those who understand that healthcare AI isn't just about deploying algorithms. It's about navigating regulatory pathways, building teams that combine scientific rigor with business acumen, and creating solutions that deliver measurable value across the entire healthcare ecosystem, from the hospital administrator to the patient thousands of miles away.

Conclusion:

Li's perspective reveals a healthcare investment landscape where AI's value extends far beyond efficiency gains. By compressing clinical trial timelines, reducing administrative burden, and enabling remote specialist access, AI promises to reshape the fundamental economics of healthcare while delivering better patient outcomes. For founders in this space, the message is clear: combine deep scientific expertise with regulatory experience and business savvy, focus relentlessly on who will pay for your solution, nurture investor relationships over years not months, and demonstrate you understand unit economics from day one.