Clinic AI in Rio de Janeiro, what private clinics and health systems should know in 2026

The private care market in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro's capital counted 45,532 registered doctors in 2024 for an estimated 6,729,894 residents, a ratio of 6.77 per 1,000 that is more than two and a half times the 2.56 found in the rest of the state.¹ Across Rio de Janeiro state the study found 1,580 dermatologists and 1,048 plastic surgeons with a specialist title.¹

Private plans cover a large share of residents. ANS coverage data updated in September 2026 records 3,043,985 beneficiaries of medical and hospital plans living in the city.²

Visitors add a second market. Embratur counted 2,196,443 international tourists arriving in Rio de Janeiro state in 2025, out of 9,287,196 for Brazil as a whole.³ Nationally the largest source countries were Argentina with 3,386,823 visitors and Chile with 801,921.³

The rules a clinic in Rio de Janeiro works under

A health establishment in the city operates only after IVISA-Rio, the municipal sanitary surveillance institute, issues its sanitary licence.⁴ Each doctor is registered with CREMERJ, the regional council of medicine for Rio de Janeiro state.⁵

For remote care, CFM Resolution 2.314 of 2022 requires the teleconsultation to be recorded in an electronic health record system meeting security level NGS2 of the ICP-Brasil standard, and the patient's free and informed agreement to be given electronically or by recorded reading and kept in that record.⁶ Where a clinic outsources record storage, responsibility for the data is shared by contract between the doctor and the contractor.⁶

Law 13.787 of 2018 allows paper and digitised records to be destroyed only after at least 20 years from the last entry.⁷ Since late August 2026, CFM Resolution 2.454 has also asked doctors to note in the patient's record when an AI system supported a medical decision.⁸

Under the LGPD, controllers may not share health data with each other to gain an economic advantage, outside the exceptions for providing health services and portability the law lists.⁹ Fines run up to 2% of the company's revenue in Brazil, capped at R$50 million per infringement, and any incident that may cause relevant harm must be reported to the national authority and to the people affected.⁹ That authority is the ANPD, now the Agência Nacional de Proteção de Dados.¹⁰

wai hosts each clinic's records in its own country, under that country's rules. We set this up with your clinic. wai is compliant with these rules and built for clinics in Rio de Janeiro. Records also travel through the RNDS, the national data network that lets doctors see a patient's history during care and lets patients read their own records in the Meu SUS Digital app.¹¹ wai is built to connect to the RNDS. We set up your clinic's connection with you.

The languages Rio patients write in

Residents write in the national language, and visitors bring others. Argentina and Chile were the two largest sources of international tourists to Brazil in 2025.³

wai works in any language.¹² In the demo, use real enquiries from your own inbox, including the overseas ones, and check each draft before you approve it.

What a demo shows in Rio de Janeiro

A visitor staying in Ipanema emails at 23:40 asking whether a surgeon can see her before Friday. wai reads the surgeon's busy times from Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar, offers an open Thursday slot and drafts the reply. The coordinator approves it in the morning, and the email and a later WhatsApp from the same patient sit in one thread.

She books on the clinic's own website and pays the deposit by card or Apple Pay into the clinic's Stripe account, with the clinic as merchant of record.¹³ Her confirmation, receipt and intake questionnaire arrive straight away, and her results and letters stay in her own wai Profile when she flies home.¹³

For a follow-up by video, recording consent is taken when she books, and the call runs from a quiet lobby with live captions.¹⁴ wai drafts the note during the visit and the surgeon reviews and signs it. See the full flow in one inbox for clinic messages.

For hospital groups, health plans and the public sector in Rio

wai builds a defined care pathway on its live platform for hospital groups, operators and public bodies, with the organisation owning what is built and data and exit terms set in the contract. Details are on wai for organisations.

Where to start

First, check that your IVISA-Rio licence and every doctor's CREMERJ registration are current.⁴⁵ Second, rewrite the teleconsultation consent so it is captured electronically and stored in the record, as Resolution 2.314 sets out.⁶

Third, set a retention rule of at least 20 years for every record wai helps create.⁷ Then request a demo with a week of enquiries from residents and visitors, and see the prices on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions