Raffaele Petrone is Executive Chairman of Petrone Group, an international healthcare group with nearly 2,000 employees and collaborators. He is Chairman of Health Triage, an Italian deep tech company developing artificial intelligence solutions for cancer prevention and diagnostics.
Investing in a company that develops artificial intelligence for healthcare means looking beyond technology. It takes clinical expertise, execution capability, scientific validation and an industrial vision able to turn an innovation into a tool that hospitals can actually use. This is the perspective behind the Health Triage project. We asked Raffaele Petrone what convinced him to invest in the company and which factors, in his view, will determine the success of artificial intelligence in medicine.
Q: Why did you choose to invest in Health Triage?
A: “My work has taught me that good technology alone is not enough. I have seen projects that were excellent from a scientific standpoint but never managed to become solutions the market adopted. At Health Triage I found something different: clinical expertise, technological capability and a very concrete vision of how these solutions should be used in hospitals. That is what convinced me. Innovation creates value only when it improves the work of healthcare professionals and, as a result, the quality of care.”
Q: Many companies are investing in artificial intelligence today. Where does the real competitive advantage lie?
A: “In innovation density. Health Triage is not working on incremental solutions, but on frontiers that many will explore five or ten years from now. BreastNegative and PROSTATE V-Bio are two concrete examples: technologies that are ready today and anticipate what will become standard tomorrow. That is the mark of those who lead, not those who follow. In the healthcare AI market, many are chasing the trends of the moment. Health Triage instead starts from an unsolved clinical problem and builds from there, with scientific rigour, real patents and validation in the field. It is a much harder approach, but it is the only one that creates lasting value.
For many years, people believed the advantage lay in building the best algorithm. Today it is no longer that simple. Software development tools are becoming increasingly accessible, and artificial intelligence itself is dramatically accelerating development times. The real difference will be made by those who can integrate these technologies into clinical pathways, making them genuinely useful for doctors and healthcare facilities. That is where value is created: when a solution becomes part of daily practice and helps improve organisation, timing and the quality of clinical decisions.”
Q: How is a company like Health Triage working in this direction?
A: “The company has chosen a very pragmatic approach. It does not develop technology by thinking about the algorithm first and then looking for an application. It starts from well-defined clinical problems and builds tools that can be integrated into professionals’ daily work. This requires research, scientific validation, continuous dialogue with physicians and the ability to adapt technology to existing processes. It is a more demanding path, but it is also the one that offers the greatest prospects for growth.”
Q: What value can an industrial group like yours bring to a deep tech company like Health Triage?
A: “A deep tech company can have very advanced scientific and technological expertise, but turning innovation into a product the market adopts also requires industrial experience, organisational capability and a long-term vision. That is exactly our contribution: helping the company grow without losing the rigour that sets it apart. It means supporting its strategic choices, fostering partnerships and creating the conditions for technologies born from research to be adopted at scale. Today, developing innovative solutions is not enough: you need to build a company capable of evolving them, integrating them and bringing them to market consistently.”
Q: How do you see Health Triage evolving in the coming years?
A: “I believe the market will reward companies that can combine scientific innovation, industrial strength and clinical credibility. This is the same vision that guides Petrone Group: connecting expertise, research and innovation to turn high-potential ideas into solutions that concretely improve people’s health and quality of life. We have always operated with an international outlook, supported by a governance model that combines the continuity of a family business with a growth-oriented managerial approach. This allows us to build value over time, based on principles I consider essential: ethics, transparency, a focus on people, curiosity about innovation and the ability to execute. Health Triage fully embodies this vision. The goal is not simply to develop new artificial intelligence applications, but to help make medicine more efficient, sustainable and accessible, putting technology at the service of patients and healthcare professionals.”