Building MediCalli from the Ground Up — Kenai Benítez’s Mission to Make Healthcare Accessible in Mexico

At 20 years old, Kenai Benítez is building something his community has long gone without: fast, accessible medical guidance. Growing up in a rural town in Mexico, the nearest hospital was a 45-minute trip—on a good day. During the pandemic, he watched family and neighbors struggle to access basic care. Even after moving to university in Toluca—an hour from the city—he ran into the same barrier: no nearby clinics, long waits, and a system stretched thin.

That lived reality is the heartbeat of MediCalli, an AI-powered chatbot that offers preliminary medical guidance via mobile. “Here, we have phones and internet—but not hospitals,” Kenai explains. The idea is simple and pragmatic: ask the kinds of intake questions a nurse would, generate a preliminary diagnosis and recommendations, and give users a PDF summary they can take to a pharmacy or clinic—saving time, money, and often the trip.

MediCalli is early, and Kenai is honest about that. The product runs on Telegram today because it’s free and fast to deploy. He and his small team—just three people from Mexico and Brazil—are testing with friends, classmates, and people from Kenai’s hometown. Medical students reviewing the chatbot’s responses say the guidance is solid, though sometimes patients want more context. That feedback loop is the point: start small, listen closely, and improve quickly.

Kenai’s approach is scrappy and deeply user-centered. When older adults in his community struggled to type, he prioritized adding voice notes. When the location feature only searched within 5km—a fit for small towns but not for his remote campus—he expanded the radius. A neighbor suggested the option to talk to a doctor by phone or video; Kenai revived an earlier pandemic concept of tele-consults and folded it back into the roadmap. “We’re building with the community, not just for them,” he says.

MediCalli is also an evolution. In 2020, Kenai envisioned a physical telemedicine “cabin” that would take vitals and connect people to doctors over video. He even won support from a Samsung fellowship—but pandemic constraints and regulation made execution difficult. The lesson stuck: meet people where they are. Today, that means a chatbot for a population that already uses WhatsApp and Telegram daily. Tomorrow, it likely means moving to WhatsApp, partnering with local pharmacies and clinics, and growing the team.

The need is undeniable. Mexico has roughly one doctor per 1,000 people—about half the WHO recommendation—while populations in many regions continue to grow. Public care is free but overwhelmed; private care is often unaffordable. MediCalli doesn’t claim to replace doctors. It aims to widen the front door to care—especially for people who would otherwise search the open internet or skip care altogether.

Kenai’s connection to Equitech Futures is hands-on and recent. Through the Equitech network at Equitech Futures Institute at Oxford this summer, he met one of his current teammates, Luiz Cavalcante —expanding MediCalli’s capabilities and perspective. The venture also became a semi-finalist in the Kevin Xu Innovation competition run by Equitech Futures and the Rhodes Trust, a signal of both promise and traction at an early stage. Equitech is following MediCalli’s progress as part of its alumni founder network, spotlighting builders who apply technology to real-world, underserved problems. It’s the kind of founder story Equitech champions: grounded in lived experience, relentlessly practical, and ambitiously hopeful.

In the next year, Kenai’s goals are focused and attainable: ship a simple website, migrate to WhatsApp as funding allows, formalize doctor oversight for higher trust, and partner locally to reach more users. He’s applying for fellowships and small grants to keep momentum. The vision is bigger: an accessible, culturally aware AI health companion that shortens the distance—literal and figurative—between people and care.

MediCalli is a work in progress. That’s the point. In a landscape where the perfect can be the enemy of the good, Kenai is doing what good founders do: testing, learning, and building with the people who need it most. It started as a response to a problem he knew intimately. It’s becoming a platform that could reshape access to care for communities like his across Mexico.

If this mission resonates, try MediCalli on Telegram and share it with someone who could benefit—every new user helps widen the front door to care.