Caroline Merin spent nearly a decade developing on-demand services as the first Latin American general manager for Uber Eats and later as the COO of Rappi. In that time, she recognized how badly healthcare technology lagged behind. While patients had come to expect doctors to respond as quickly as a delivery app, most medical professionals on the continent were forced to rely on WhatsApp for all patient communication. Merin noted that, as a patient, she initially found it incredible that she could text her doctor on WhatsApp and get a response.
However, she also realized how overwhelming this method had become for physicians. A doctor who sees twenty patients during the day might go home to a hundred messages, expected to answer immediately without the patient’s health record in front of them. Having long been interested in building her own startup, Merin saw a clear opportunity to solve these communication challenges.
Two years ago, she launched Leona Health, an AI copilot that integrates directly with doctors’ WhatsApp accounts. The startup recently revealed it has raised fourteen million dollars in seed funding. The round was 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 company also announced its service is now available to doctors in fourteen Latin American countries across twenty-two medical specialties.
With Leona, patients continue to send messages via WhatsApp, but doctors receive and manage that communication through the startup’s mobile app. The app sorts all messages by priority, suggests responses, and allows other team members like nurses to reply on the doctor’s behalf. The startup will soon launch a fully autonomous agent to handle conversational scheduling and simple patient intake.
Solving the WhatsApp communication challenge is critical in Latin America because patients often choose their doctors based on a willingness to use this channel. Doctors receive a mix of serious medical consultations and routine administrative requests, such as notes for a child’s school or appointment receipts. Since these messages arrive at all hours, physicians feel pressured to monitor WhatsApp constantly.
Leona addresses this by immediately alerting doctors only to the most serious health requests, allowing them to deprioritize routine questions. The goal is to help doctors regain time, with users reporting they save two to three hours per day using the platform.
While Leona is starting in Latin America, its long-term mission is to expand to other regions where patients similarly demand and are permitted to communicate with doctors via WhatsApp instead of formal electronic medical records systems. The company’s team of thirteen is split between Mexico City and Silicon Valley, where Merin says the best AI engineers are located.