Vara, a German-headquartered AI breast cancer screening startup, has snapped $8.9 million in funding. This follows the €4.5 million in an extension to its Series A funding raised in 2022. This round welcomes new investors, including European family offices Smart Family Office (Austria) and FJH (Germany), as well as Berlin-based healthcare investor IBB Ventures, which recently backed Ucaneo.
Expansion in emerging markets
Vara’s software is integrated into Germany’s National Breast Cancer Screening Program. It supports 40% of the country’s screening centres, the only AI system deployed at scale in the program, benefiting over 80,000 women monthly.
With this investment, the company is furthering its expansion into emerging healthcare markets, including India. The company entered into a partnership with NM Medical, a leading provider of imaging services in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Pune, in 2023. The collaboration aims to elevate the standard of preventive care and early breast cancer detection in India, with a focus on mammography as a cornerstone of women’s health programs.
AI-based clinical screening
Vara was founded by Jonas Muff and Stefan Bunk in 2018 in Berlin to make data-driven breast cancer screening accessible to everyone. Headquartered in Berlin, the company has offices in India. It partners with local screening clinics to provide breast cancer screenings to the billion women who do not have access to government screening programmes or expensive private screening.
Vara’s AI-powered software enhances accuracy and efficiency in breast cancer detection. Currently, nearly 40% of breast cancer screening in Germany is managed on Vara’s AI platform, the only AI system deployed at scale in the program. Its achievements include the screening of over 100,000 images per month, increased cancer detection rates, including finding 50% of the cancers that radiologists otherwise would have missed, reduced false positives, and enhanced workflow efficiency for radiologists.
As per a recent study by the company, the integration of AI into mammography screening was found to have significant improvements in all key screening parameters, including improvement in cancer detection rates, reduction in recall rates, and workload reductions for radiologists.
Jonas Muff, CEO of Vara, stated, “This raise, which is particularly significant in today’s economic climate, not only validates our technology but enables us to accelerate Vara’s expansion for global impact. We’re extremely pleased with the outcomes we’re already seeing with our partners in healthcare, and we look forward to sharing more progress soon.
“By combining an AI-driven screening approach with proven medical evidence and commercialisation in emerging markets, Vara is an excellent fit for the goals of our impact fund,” said Ute Mercker, Investment Director at IBB Ventures. “Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women. We hope that by bringing this innovative screening to market in India, Vara will be able to increase survival rates and improve the quality of life of women.”
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