{"id":211504,"date":"2025-12-16T18:11:58","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T18:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/16\/uber-eats-alum-lands-14m-seed-from-a16z-to-fix-whatsapp-chaos-for-latams-doctors-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T18:11:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T18:11:58","slug":"uber-eats-alum-lands-14m-seed-from-a16z-to-fix-whatsapp-chaos-for-latams-doctors-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/16\/uber-eats-alum-lands-14m-seed-from-a16z-to-fix-whatsapp-chaos-for-latams-doctors-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber Eats alum lands $14M seed from a16z to fix WhatsApp chaos for LatAm&#8217;s doctors | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI thought, as a patient, especially as an American, how incredible that I can text my doctor on WhatsApp, and they\u2019ll respond,\u201d she told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Merin also realized just how overwhelming this communication method had become for physicians. \u201cA 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Merin, who had long been interested in building her own startup, saw an opportunity to improve doctors\u2019 communication challenges. So, two years ago, she launched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leona.health\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Leona Health<\/a>, an AI-copilot integrated with doctors\u2019 WhatsApp accounts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 V\u00e9lez; and Rappi CEO Sim\u00f3n Borrero. The startup also announced that its service is now available to doctors in 14 Latin American countries across 22 medical specialties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With Leona, patients continue to send messages on WhatsApp, but doctors receive and manage that communication through the startup\u2019s 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\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The startup will also soon launch a fully autonomous agent that will handle conversational scheduling and simple intake.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\">\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__location\">San Francisco<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__date\">October 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThese poor doctors, they\u2019re receiving requests for very serious medical consults to, \u2018I need a letter for my kids\u2019 school,\u2019 or, \u2018I want a receipt for my appointment last week,\u2019\u201d Merin said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe idea is to help the doctor regain time,\u201d Merin said. \u201cWe\u2019re hearing from our users that they\u2019re saving two to three hours a day by using Leona.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Leona is starting by serving Latin America, the company\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leona\u2019s team of 13 is currently split between Mexico City and Silicon Valley, where, according to Merin, the best AI engineers are located.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/12\/16\/uber-eats-alum-lands-14m-seed-from-a16z-to-fix-whatsapp-chaos-for-latams-doctors\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":211505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}