AI holds great promise for healthcare, but not just in medicine. Many startups believe that machine learning-based systems can handle adjacent tasks like appointment scheduling and confirmations well.
Starting from Brazil. Care code Among those AI believers. It aims to reduce healthcare costs and improve medical outcomes by developing AI agents that occur before and after medical appointments — typically from a call center.
“We used to think that only the moment of seeing a doctor was important, but after 10 years in healthcare, we realized that moment (around the appointment) is just as important as the medical encounter,” CEO Thomaz Srougi (pictured above) told TechCrunch.
Srougi comes from a family of doctors, but not himself. It comes from his first-hand knowledge of health care. Dr. ConsultantHe continues to chair and chair the private medical services provider, which has raised approximately $168 million in funding.
Carecode is still early in its fundraising journey, but already has an impressive table: its $4.3 million pre-seed round was funded mostly by a16z and QED, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, K50 Ventures, and Latitud Ventures. Profile pictures from Brazil's tech scene, including Nubank founder David Vélez.
Latin America still has venture capital. Through the “beginning of winter”. But – thanks to these early seed indications – there is still funding available for entrepreneurs like Srougi and his co-founder Pedro Magalhães.
“It counts a lot for major VCs, especially at a time when the world is upside down,” noted Gabriel Vasquez, a16z partner at Srougi, who also helped mature the idea for Carecode and moved the startup from planning to implementation.
Srougi is drawing on the relationships he has built during his career to find partners who can test Carecode. Early results with a partner seem promising enough to name, and the results suggest that its AI agents can do most of the work of a typical healthcare call center for a fraction of the cost, even going a step further by filling in canceled slots, leaving employees to take care of the most complex cases.
Importantly for Brazil, Carecode meets users who are often on WhatsApp, which supports text and voice messages. “This is really important, because most of the elderly and low-income people prefer to send WhatsApp voice instead of typing,” Srougi said, adding that voice calls are also on the roadmap.
This localization is one aspect that differentiates it from US standards such as Carecode. SierraAn AI startup co-founded by Bret Taylor.
Another difference is Carecode's vertical focus. According to Camila Vieira Freitas, QED Partner and Head of Brazil; This gives the startup an edge over horizontal approaches that “require multiple solutions to achieve discrete results, negatively affect the customer experience, and leave significant value untouched.”
Market size can be a limitation for a vertical model, but healthcare in Brazil isn't exactly a small field, and the Carecode complication isn't. According to Srougi, healthcare companies in Brazil spend 50% of their revenue on contact centers and administrative payroll—about $100 billion annually.
Srougi and his team believe that going vertical in a market with specific needs, such as healthcare, will help build Carecode's moat compared to generic competitors, but the startup may be different later. “We will ensure the future; For example, it can go into other sectors related to life insurance and healthcare. We want to click payments. We can use financing. It all comes down to health care,” he added.