Leona Health Secures $14M from a16z for AI Doctor Co-pilot

Leona Health, a startup founded by former Uber Eats and Rappi executive Caroline Merin, has secured $14 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The company aims to revolutionize patient communication for doctors across Latin America by deploying an AI co-pilot designed to manage the overwhelming volume of messages received via WhatsApp.

Merin, who spent nearly a decade developing on-demand speed as the first Latin American General Manager for Uber Eats and later as COO of Rappi, recognized a significant lag in healthcare technology. While patients now expect instant responses akin to their delivery apps, most medical professionals in Latin America are forced to rely on WhatsApp for all patient interactions.

“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.

However, Merin quickly realized the immense burden this communication method placed on 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 explained.

Leona Health: An AI Solution for Doctor-Patient Communication

Seeing an opportunity to alleviate these communication challenges, Merin launched Leona Health two years ago. The company developed an AI co-pilot that integrates directly with doctors’ WhatsApp accounts.

On Tuesday, Leona Health announced its successful seed funding round, totaling $14 million. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with notable participation from General Catalyst, Accel, and the CEOs of Maven Clinic (Kate Ryder), Nubank (David Vélez), and Rappi (Simón Borrero).

The startup also revealed that its service is now available to doctors in 14 Latin American countries, covering 22 medical specialties.

How Leona Health Works

Leona Health allows patients to continue sending messages on WhatsApp as usual. However, doctors manage and receive these communications through Leona’s dedicated mobile app. The AI-powered app intelligently sorts messages by priority, suggests appropriate responses, and enables other team members, such as nurses or fellow doctors, to reply on the primary physician’s behalf.

The company plans to soon introduce a fully autonomous agent capable of handling conversational scheduling and simple patient intake processes.

Addressing a Critical Need in Latin American Healthcare

Solving the WhatsApp communication challenge is particularly crucial in Latin America, where, according to Merin, patients often choose their doctors based on their willingness to communicate via 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 noted.

Given that these messages can arrive at any hour, including evenings and weekends, physicians are frequently compelled to monitor their WhatsApp around the clock. Leona addresses this by immediately alerting doctors only to the most serious health requests, allowing them to deprioritize routine or administrative queries.

“The idea is to help the doctor regain time. We’re hearing from our users that they’re saving two to three hours a day by using Leona,” Merin stated.

While Leona Health is currently focused on Latin America, its long-term mission extends to other geographies where, unlike in the US, patients also prefer communicating with their doctors via WhatsApp rather than through traditional electronic medical records systems like Epic.

Leona’s 13-person team is split between Mexico City and Silicon Valley, a strategic decision Merin says is due to the concentration of top AI engineers in the latter.