Caroline Merin, who spent nearly a decade developing on-demand services as the first Latin American general manager for Uber Eats and later COO of Rappi, recognized how badly healthcare technology is lagging behind. While patients have come to expect doctors to respond as quickly as delivery apps, most healthcare professionals on the continent are forced to rely on WhatsApp for all communication with patients.
“I thought, as a patient, especially as an American woman, how incredible it is that I can message my doctor on WhatsApp and they will respond,” she told TechCrunch.
But Merin also realized how overwhelming this method of communication had become for doctors. “A doctor who sees 20 patients during the day, comes home, has 100 messages and is expected to respond immediately and remember who the patient is without the health record in front of him,” he said.
Merin, who had long been interested in creating her own startup, saw an opportunity to improve doctors’ communication challenges. So, two years ago, it began Leona Healthan AI-copilot integrated with doctors’ WhatsApp accounts.
On Tuesday, Leona disclosed that it has 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 in 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 prioritizes all messages, suggests responses, and allows other team members (such as doctors or nurses) to respond to patients on the doctor’s behalf.
The startup will also soon launch a fully autonomous agent that will handle chat scheduling and simple hiring.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
13-15 October 2026
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 lousy doctors, they take requests for very serious medical advice, ‘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, doctors are often forced to monitor their WhatsApp around the clock. Leona solves this by immediately notifying doctors of only the most serious health requests and allowing them to prioritize more routine or administrative questions.
“The idea is to help the doctor recover time,” Merin said. “We hear from our users that they save two to three hours a day using Leona.”
While Leona is starting out serving Latin America, the company’s long-term mission is to expand its services to other geographies where, unlike the US, patients demand and are allowed to communicate with their doctors via WhatsApp rather than electronic medical record 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.
