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New @a16z investment: Most of us think of WhatsApp as a simple messaging app, but in many parts of the world, it also functions as the operating layer of daily life. It’s where families communicate, where businesses run, and increasingly, where healthcare is delivered. In LatAm, more than 85 percent of physicians rely on WhatsApp to schedule appointments, share results, and manage follow-ups. But WhatsApp wasn’t built for healthcare. Effective clinical communication requires structured workflows, clear accountability, and reliable tracking of patient needs. Instead, physicians are left navigating dozens of disorganized messaging threads with patients and families, with no visibility into urgency, patient status, and relevant clinical history. The result: hours each day consumed by manual sorting – time that should go towards patient care, not inbox management. The system needs a better answer, and Leona is building it. Leona is an AI-native operating system for providers, built directly into the channel physicians already rely on most: WhatsApp. Through direct integration with the messaging app platform, Leona brings clarity and clinical structure to patient communication – organizing messages, flagging urgency, and connecting each exchange to a longitudinal patient record. This co-pilot for clinical messaging is part of a comprehensive practice management platform that facilitates scheduling, documentation, and billing. The physician adoption is striking: since launching its Latin America beta in April, Leona has expanded organically to thousands of physicians, processing millions of patient interactions across more than a dozen countries, and saving providers up to three hours per day. As care increasingly lives in messages and mobile moments – delivered virtually, asynchronously, and beyond the four walls of the clinic – the need for infrastructure that can coordinate clinical workflows becomes increasingly urgent. Leona is building that backbone. Co-founders Caroline Merin (@merinsay), Tom Chokel, & Arela Solis bring deep operational and technical expertise to one of the region’s most urgent infrastructure challenges. We @a16z are proud to lead Leona Health's seed financing as they redefine how care is delivered across Latin America and beyond. @a16zBioHealth @julesyoo @generalcatalyst @hollsmaloney @marcbhargava @Accel @amitku @homebrew @satyap @hunterwalk @_KateRyder @velez_david
Read why we invested here: https://t.co/RSymSuEdgX
Last night, @60Minutes highlighted the wave of life-saving therapies increasingly coming to market, and the missing payment infrastructure to ensure those cures reach patients. Worth a watch, just make sure you have tissues near by 😢 https://t.co/ByHTxBlwEy
Partner @a16z investing in healthcare technology. Prev @flatironhealth (acq by @roche for ~$2b) & @deloittehealth. Professional student.
"Do I cover this drug and potentially go bankrupt? or do I not help my unlucky employee?" 2/3 of employers pay their own medical bills (i.e. "self-insured"). The bio economy is producing cures that our healthcare system is not set up to pay for.
Partner @a16z investing in healthcare technology. Prev @flatironhealth (acq by @roche for ~$2b) & @deloittehealth. Professional student.
"Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel. Service is a monologue...Hospitality, on the other hand, is a dialogue" Best quote from Danny Meyer's book "Setting the Table".
Partner @a16z investing in healthcare technology. Prev @flatironhealth (acq by @roche for ~$2b) & @deloittehealth. Professional student.
Cures are already here -- they just aren’t evenly distributed. Aradigm is changing that. Some of the most innovative, life-saving therapies are also the most expensive. For example, Lenmeldy, a potentially curative therapy for Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD), carries a list price of $4.25 million per dose, making it the most expensive therapy in the world. Lenmeldy is not an outlier: many cell & gene therapies carry million-dollar price tags for a single dose. Given the current healthcare payment and care infrastructure, the distribution and administration of innovative, life-saving therapies is both incredibly inefficient and a terrible experience for patients and providers alike: 1. Insurance limitations: These therapies generate benefits that accrue over a lifetime, but today the price must be paid upfront 2. Patient access burden: Rounds of prior authorizations and negotiations between care providers and payors delay patient care 3. Care delivery complexity: These curative therapies are expensive to make and complex to administer, requiring heavy oversight from clinicians both pre- and post-administration Aradigm is the infrastructure layer for the cure-based era of healthcare. While traditional employer-sponsored plans treat these life-saving treatments as (very) expensive one-offs, Aradigm is building a care and coverage ecosystem tailor-made for these kinds of breakthroughs. By pooling risks and resources specific to these patients, Aradigm offers economies of scale, domain expertise, and an orchestration layer that traditional models lack. Aradigm ensures patients receive efficient, high-quality access to advanced therapeutic approaches by: 1. aggregating a group of employers and insurers to effectively pool risk and reduce premiums; 2. convening a network of specialized providers and manufacturers to negotiate preferred pricing and financing, and create a shared knowledge-base for both patients and providers, alike; 3. orchestrating all stakeholders through the patient journey in a way that reduces the logistical burden of accessing, administering, and, ultimately, paying for life-saving care. Today, we at @a16z (@julesyoo & I) are excited to congratulate Aradigm on their public launch and Series A financing led by Frist Cressey Ventures along with Morgan Health and us, after we first backed the company at inception here @a16z in 2024. William Shrank, Spencer Carrucciu, Annie Collins, Justus Ruff, & the Aradigm team are uniquely positioned to solve this gap between the fields of bio & health. They’ve developed a first-of-its-kind platform with support of 15 of the nation’s largest employers and six leading payors. We’re proud to continue our partnership as they build the backbone that ensures important therapies are broadly accessible to patients. The cure-based era of medicine needs new infrastructure. Aradigm is building it. https://t.co/pqiHjK4Khv
Partner @a16z investing in healthcare technology. Prev @flatironhealth (acq by @roche for ~$2b) & @deloittehealth. Professional student.
Mexico is booming 🇲🇽
Partner @a16z investing in healthcare technology. Prev @flatironhealth (acq by @roche for ~$2b) & @deloittehealth. Professional student.