Estonian AI startup Better Medicine raises €6M to tackle radiologist shortage with AI-powered cancer detection

Radiology teams are drowning in scans, but the number of specialists who can read them isn’t keeping up. In the UK, there are only about 10 radiologists per 100,000 people, and half of the open positions go unfilled. Globally, doctors spend roughly 12 million hours a year measuring lesions and writing reports—tasks that are repetitive yet critical, and ones that technology could help lighten.

Better Medicine, an Estonia-based AI startup, thinks it has the answer. The company has just raised €1 million in pre-seed funding led by Soulmates Ventures, with Specialist VC, UT Ventures, and several angel investors joining the round. The raise follows a €2.5 million grant from the European Innovation Council earlier this year, bringing the company’s total to nearly €6 million when combined with other grants and private capital.

Its flagship product, BMVision Kidney, uses deep-learning models trained on annotated clinical datasets to spot malignant kidney lesions in CT scans. The tool recently became the first CE-certified AI-based kidney cancer detection solution compliant with the EU’s stricter MDR 2017/745 regulations. In clinical use, radiologists have reported up to 52% time savings and a 99.2% detection rate when paired with the system. Another tool, BM iMeasure, streamlines lesion measurements and reporting.

“Radiologists are under immense pressure to maintain total focus on highly repetitive tasks that don’t necessarily require medical expertise but are still critical for diagnosis,” said founder and CEO Priit Salumaa. “Imagine a second set of eyes, but multiplied by 1000, always alert and never tired: we are making early cancer detection easy and freeing doctors to avoid burnout and focus on what truly requires their judgment. The upside is more human lives saved.”

Founded in 2020 in Tartu, Better Medicine now operates across six countries, working with clinical partners such as Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Tartu University Hospital, and Pärnu Hospital. Investment director Michal Sikyta of Soulmates Ventures said the company is meeting “a clear and urgent need in oncology diagnostics,” supporting overburdened health systems with reliable AI tools.

The new funding will go toward rolling out products in multiple European markets, expanding into other organs and metastatic sites, and preparing for FDA clearance. The company plans U.S. clinical pilots designed to meet FDA study requirements and is already in talks with Estonian health insurers to prove the cost benefits of its technology, key to securing long-term adoption.