The story so far
Jonas and Stefan are founding members of Merantix, a Berlin-based venture studio leading a fast-growing international network of partners to address the key challenges of unlocking AI. In 2018, they spun off from Merantix and focused their efforts on breast cancer, the most common form of cancer in women, and for screening radiologists full of routine tasks ideal for AI. They created Vara, a fully augmented AI-powered breast cancer screening platform for radiologists, enabling them to focus on finding cancer early. Its cloud-based, CE-certified workflow incorporates a viewer, reporting interface as well as a performance metrics dashboard that can be used across multiple workstations in any location.
Vara flags and automatically prepares a structured report for normal mammograms, promising to significantly enhance reader performance. Furthermore, Vara alerts radiologists to potentially suspicious cancers they may have otherwise missed, promising to decrease missed cancers. Vara truly has the potential to transform the breast cancer screening experience.
The OMERS Ventures team met Jonas in September 2019, when he and Stefan were fundraising for their series A round, and we invested in Spring 2020. Vara is currently being introduced into the clinical routine in Germany and plans to use its funding to further European expansion, prepare to enter the United States, and leverage its vast data pools to improve financial and clinical outcomes for women, screening providers, and governments.
