I've been attending healthcare conferences for 25 years. You develop a feel for the mood of the room — what people are excited about, what they're worried about, what questions they're actually asking when they're not standing in front of a sales rep.

Last week at the American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the mood was unmistakable. The AI hype cycle in healthcare has officially entered its accountability phase.

And that's a very good thing for the companies that can prove what they do.

The Three-Year Arc

If you've been on the conference circuit the last few years, you've watched this shift happen in real time.

Two years ago, the AI conversations at specialty conferences were exploratory. Practice leaders were curious. “Tell me what this does.” “How does it work?” “Show me a demo.” The energy was open-ended, the buying motion mostly theoretical.

Last year, the tone shifted. More practices had started pilots — a chatbot here, a patient messaging tool there. Conversations got more specific, but they still centered on capabilities. “Does it handle X? Does it integrate with Y?”

This year was different.

The question I kept hearing — at our booth, between sessions, over coffee — was some version of:
“Does it actually work?”

Not “what does it do.” Not “how is it different.” Does it work? Can you prove it? Show me the numbers.

That’s a fundamentally different sales environment. And it requires a fundamentally different kind of company to win in it.

Why the Skepticism Is Earned

The reason practice leaders are asking “does it work” isn’t that they’ve become cynical about technology. It’s that many of them have firsthand experience with AI tools that overpromised and underdelivered.

They invested in outreach platforms that generated impressive dashboards but didn’t move the needle on actual appointments booked. They piloted scheduling tools that worked in a demo and fell apart in real operations — with different providers, insurance panels, appointment types, and multi-location complexity.

They sat through QBRs where vendors celebrated engagement metrics while no-show rates stayed flat.

Private equity operators were especially direct. They’ve seen the decks, funded the pilots — now they want unit economics:

• Revenue recovered per dollar spent

• Not engagement metrics

• Not call volumes

The frustration isn’t with AI — it’s with the gap between promise and reality.

Why “Does It Work” Is Our Whole Strategy

When I joined Parakeet, what stood out wasn’t just the AI — it was the business model.

We get paid when appointments get booked.
Not when calls are placed.
Not when texts are sent.

When a patient actually gets scheduled.

That changes everything:

• Product decisions → If it doesn’t book appointments, it doesn’t matter

• Onboarding → Faster go-live = faster revenue (for both sides)

• Team mindset → No hiding behind vanity metrics

Results don’t live in dashboards — they show up in:

• Recovered revenue

• Filled cancellations

• Reduced no-shows

When someone asks “does it work?”, the answer isn’t a slide — it’s their own data.

The Coffee Station Rule

The most valuable insights at conferences don’t come from booths or sessions — they come from informal conversations.

At AAD, those conversations kept circling back to the same questions:

• Can you show results from a practice like mine?

• What happens when something breaks?

• How fast can we go live?

• Are your incentives aligned with ours?

These are operational questions, not aspirational ones.

That’s a sign the market is maturing.

This Isn’t a Dermatology Story

This shift isn’t limited to dermatology — it’s happening across healthcare.

Rick has seen this pattern before:

• Epocrates → Early curiosity → real adoption after proof

• Jumo Health → Vision → measurable outcomes

• WebMD/Medscape → Mobile succeeded because it proved value

The pattern is consistent:

Curiosity attracts early adopters.
Proof converts the market.

Final Thought

Healthcare AI is entering its proof phase.

The winners won’t be:

• The best pitch

• The most features

They’ll be the companies with real results.

Rick Scorzetti is the Chief Commercial Officer at Parakeet Health, an AI-powered patient access platform for large specialty practices. He has 25 years of experience in healthcare technology sales leadership, including three major exits at Epocrates, WebMD/Medscape, and Jumo Health.

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