Ex-Uber Eats Founder Raises $14M to Organize Doctors’ WhatsApp in LatAm
▼ Summary
– Caroline Merin founded Leona Health to address the overwhelming use of WhatsApp for patient communication by doctors in Latin America, which lacked the efficiency of modern delivery apps.
– Leona Health is an AI-copilot integrated with WhatsApp that helps doctors prioritize messages, suggests responses, and allows team members to reply on their behalf.
– The startup recently raised $14 million in seed funding from prominent investors and is now available to doctors in 14 Latin American countries across 22 specialties.
– The service is critical because patients in the region often choose doctors based on their WhatsApp responsiveness, and it saves physicians an estimated two to three hours daily.
– While initially focused on Latin America, the company’s long-term mission is to expand to other regions where patients similarly prefer WhatsApp over traditional medical record systems.
A former executive who helped build on-demand delivery platforms in Latin America is now tackling a critical gap in healthcare technology. Caroline Merin, who previously served as the first Latin American General Manager for Uber Eats and later as COO of Rappi, noticed a stark contrast. While consumers have grown accustomed to instant responses from services like food delivery, doctors across the continent were struggling with an informal but ubiquitous system: using WhatsApp for all patient communication.
Merin observed this firsthand, initially impressed by the accessibility it offered patients. She noted the convenience of being able to text a physician directly. However, she quickly recognized the immense burden this placed on medical professionals. A single doctor could finish a day of consultations only to face an inbox overflowing with messages, expected to respond promptly without immediate access to patient health records.
This glaring inefficiency presented a clear opportunity. Two years ago, Merin founded Leona Health, a startup that integrates an AI-powered assistant directly with physicians’ WhatsApp accounts. The company recently announced a significant $14 million seed funding round. The investment was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from General Catalyst, Accel, and several high-profile CEOs, including those from Maven Clinic, Nubank, and Rappi. Leona also revealed its service is now accessible to doctors in 14 Latin American countries across more than twenty medical specialties.
The platform is designed to streamline the chaotic workflow. Patients continue sending messages through the familiar WhatsApp interface, but physicians receive and manage all communication through Leona’s dedicated mobile app. This tool intelligently organizes messages by priority, suggests appropriate responses, and enables other team members, such as nurses or associate doctors, to reply on the primary physician’s behalf. The startup plans to soon introduce a fully autonomous agent capable of handling appointment scheduling and basic patient intake conversations.
Addressing this communication bottleneck is particularly vital in Latin America, where a doctor’s responsiveness on WhatsApp can be a primary factor for patients choosing their care provider. The volume and variety of messages are overwhelming, ranging from urgent medical consultations to simple requests for administrative paperwork, all arriving at all hours. Leona’s system filters this flood, immediately alerting doctors only to the most serious health concerns and allowing them to defer less critical queries, effectively giving practitioners their evenings and weekends back.
Early user feedback indicates the solution is making a substantial impact, with some doctors reporting they reclaim two to three hours per day by using the Leona platform. While the company is currently focused on the Latin American market, its long-term vision includes expansion into other regions where WhatsApp-based patient communication is the norm, rather than formal electronic medical record systems. The startup’s small team operates from both Mexico City and Silicon Valley, leveraging the latter’s concentration of AI engineering talent to power its ambitious roadmap.
(Source: TechCrunch)
