Carecode Raises $4.3M for AI-Powered Healthcare Customer Service in Brazil

Carecode Raises $4.3 Million for AI-Powered Customer Service in Healthcare | PYMNTS.com

Brazilian startup Carecode has closed a pre-seed round to support the development of its service that uses conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver customer service in healthcare. The service enables healthcare companies to talk in the tone of their brand, "with empathy and clarity"; provide answers about scheduling, billing, FAQs and other issues; reduce costs; and increase operational efficiency, the company said in a Monday (Dec. 30) post translated to English by LinkedIn. "Our mission is clear: to help healthcare companies deliver faster, more efficient and more humane care," the company said in the post. Carecode raised $4.3 million in its pre-seed round, which was mostly funded by a16z and QED, TechCrunch reported Monday in an article to which Carecode linked in another post. Early results in tests that Carecode is conducting with a partner suggest that the company's AI agents can handle most of the tasks performed by a typical healthcare call center at "a fraction of the cost," according to the report. The company's service supports both text and audio messages on WhatsApp and will handle voice calls in the future, the report said. Currently, healthcare companies in Brazil spend 50% of their revenue on contact centers and administrative payroll, per the report. Generative AI is reshaping the landscape of customer service by automating repetitive tasks, improving personalization and enabling real-time support, according to PYMNTS Intelligence's "The AI MonitorEdge Report: AI in the Chat: Generative AI's Growing Role in Customer Service." The report found that 97% of chief marketing officers (CMOs) said they found generative AI highly effective for assisting employees and customers in accessing information quickly and easily. Enterprise software providers like Microsoft and Salesforce are racing to give companies AI systems that can independently handle customer service and business tasks like scheduling meetings, resolving customer complaints and processing orders, PYMNTS reported in October. Bank of America's virtual assistant, Erica, has dealt with over 50 million client requests since its launch in 2018, PYMNTS reported in June. Jorge Camargo, managing director of digital product management at Bank of America, told PYMNTS: "Over 98% of clients get the answers they need from Erica."

Backed by a16z and QED, Brazilian startup Carecode puts AI agents to work on healthcare | TechCrunch

AI holds huge promise for healthcare, but not just on the medical side; many startups are convinced machine learning-based systems can do a lot of good on adjacent tasks such as appointment scheduling and confirmations. Brazilian startup Carecode is among these AI believers. It's coming out of stealth with an ambition to reduce healthcare costs and improve medical outcomes by developing AI agents that focus on tasks that happen before and after a medical appointment -- and would typically be run by a call center. "We tend to think that only the moment with the doctor is what matters, but after having spent 10 years in healthcare I realized that those moments [around the appointment] are as important as the medical encounter," CEO Thomaz Srougi (pictured right in the above image) told TechCrunch. Srougi comes from a family of doctors, but he's not one himself; his first-hand knowledge of healthcare comes from founding Dr. Consulta, a private medical service provider scaleup that's raised some $168 million in funding, and where he remains chairman. Carecode is still early in its fundraising journey, but already has an impressive cap table: Its $4.3 million pre-seed round was mostly funded by a16z and QED, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, K50 Ventures, and Latitud Ventures, as well as high-profile figures from Brazil's tech scene, including Nubank founder David Vélez. Venture capital in Latin America is still going through a "startup winter" but -- as this pre-seed raise underscores -- there is still funding for entrepreneurs with track records like Srougi and his co-founder, Pedro Magalhães, a former CTO at several other startups including BEES Bank Brasil and Zé Delivery. "I think that counts a lot for major VCs, especially when the world is upside down," Srougi suggested, also noting that a16z partner Gabriel Vasquez helped mature the idea for Carecode and move the startup from planning to the execution phase. Srougi is also drawing on relationships he's built during his career to find partners that can test Carecode. Early results with one partner it can't name look promising, per the startup, which said the results suggest its AI agents can do most of the work of a typical healthcare call center for a fraction of the cost, and even go one step beyond by proactively filling cancelled slots while leaving employees to take care of the most complex cases. Importantly for Brazil, Carecode meets users where they are, which is usually on WhatsApp -- where it supports both text and audio messages. "That's really important, because older individuals and the majority of low income individuals prefer to send WhatsApp audio instead of typing," Srougi said, adding that voice calls are also on the roadmap. These localization tweaks are one aspect that makes Carecode different from U.S. benchmarks such as Sierra, the AI startup co-founded by Bret Taylor. Another difference is Carecode's vertical focus. According to QED partner and head of Brazil, Camila Vieira Freitas, this gives the startup an edge over horizontal approaches which "often necessitate multiple solutions to achieve subpar results, negatively impacting customer experience and leaving significant value untapped." Market size can be a limitation to a vertical model, but healthcare in Brazil isn't exactly a small niche, and neither is the problem Carecode is going after. According to Srougi, healthcare companies in Brazil spend 50% of their revenue on contact centers and administrative payroll -- some $100 billion annually. Srougi and his team believe that going vertical in a market with specific requirements like healthcare will help Carecode build a moat compared to more generalist competitors, but the startup could also diversify later on. "We may be able to go in the future to insurance, for instance life insurance and other sectors related to healthcare. We want to tap into payments. We may tap into financing. So all of that derives from healthcare," he added.