Caroline Merin, who spent nearly a decade developing on-demand services as the first Latin American general manager for Uber Eats and later the COO of Rappi, recognized how badly healthcare tech lagged behind. While patients expected doctors to respond as quickly as their delivery apps, most medical professionals on the continent are forced to rely on WhatsApp for all patient communication.
“I thought, as a patient, especially as an American, how incredible that I can text my doctor on WhatsApp, and they’ll respond,” she told TechCrunch.
But Merin also realized just how overwhelming this communication method had become for physicians. “A doctor who sees 20 patients during the day, gets home, has 100 messages and is expected to answer immediately and remember who the patient is without the health record in front of them,” she said.
Merin, who had long been interested in building her own startup, saw an opportunity to improve doctors’ communication challenges. So, two years ago, she launched Leona Health, an AI-copilot integrated with doctors’ WhatsApp accounts.
On Tuesday, Leona revealed that it raised $14 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from General Catalyst; Accel; Maven Clinic CEO Kate Ryder; Nubank CEO David Vélez; and Rappi CEO Simón Borrero. The startup also announced that its service is now available to doctors in 14 Latin American countries across 22 medical specialties.
With Leona, patients continue to send messages on WhatsApp, but doctors receive and manage that communication through the startup’s mobile app. The app sorts all messages in order of priority, suggests responses, and allows other team members (like doctors or nurses) to reply to patients on the doctor’s behalf.
The startup will also soon launch a fully autonomous agent that will handle conversational scheduling and simple intake.
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Solving the WhatsApp communication challenge in Latin America is critical because, according to Merin, patients in Latin America often choose their doctors based on their willingness to communicate using this channel.
“These poor doctors, they’re receiving requests for very serious medical consults to, ‘I need a letter for my kids’ school,’ or, ‘I want a receipt for my appointment last week,’” Merin said.
Since these messages can arrive in the evenings and on weekends, physicians are often forced to monitor their WhatsApp around the clock. Leona solves this by immediately alerting doctors only to the most serious health requests and allowing them to deprioritize more routine or administrative questions.
“The idea is to help the doctor regain time,” Merin said. “We’re hearing from our users that they’re saving two to three hours a day by using Leona.”
While Leona is starting by serving Latin America, the company’s long-term mission is to expand its services to other geographies, where, unlike in the U.S., patients also demand and are permitted to communicate with their doctors via WhatsApp, rather than through electronic medical records systems like Epic.
Leona’s team of 13 is currently split between Mexico City and Silicon Valley, where, according to Merin, the best AI engineers are located.
