Vara is partnering with Medical Horizons to bring evidence-based mammography AI to Italy's screening programs.
Italy just became the first European country to formally recommend AI in organized mammography screening. Here's what our partnership with Medical Horizons means in practice.
Vara, headquartered in Berlin, and Medical Horizons, Italy’s leading distributor of AI-based medical devices, are announcing a partnership that brings Vara’s screening AI to Italian mammography programs at a defining moment for the country.
Italy’s landmark moment
In December 2025, Italy’s National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) issued updated national guidelines formally recommending AI as a triage tool within organized mammography screening. With this, Italy became the first European country to issue a national-level conditional recommendation in favor of AI-based triage to determine whether mammograms require single or double human reading.
It is a landmark moment for evidence-based AI in radiology, and it shifts the question from whether AI belongs in screening to how well it gets deployed.
What Vara is built for
Vara is designed for mammography, screening and diagnostic. We currently support approximately 50% of Germany’s national breast cancer screening programme, processing around 200,000 cases per month across seven years of continuous deployment. It is the largest AI deployment in any organized screening program worldwide.
The clinical evidence comes from the PRAIM study, published in Nature Medicine in January 2025: 12 centres, 119 radiologists, 463,156 women, routine clinical conditions. +17.6% cancer detection, up to -15% false recalls, -59% radiologist workload reduction. All across major scanner types, with zero exclusion criteria. Optimising for one outcome at the expense of another is the more common finding in the literature; PRAIM showed all three improving at the same time.
Beyond evidence, what Vara brings to every program is seamless IT integration and continuous real-time AI performance monitoring, the operational backbone that lets screening programs adopt AI without compromising on patient safety.
What Medical Horizons adds
Medical Horizons has over 30 years of experience working across Italian healthcare institutions, including Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital in Rome. The team has deep relationships with the regional health authorities and screening organizations that will be moving the new national guidelines from recommendation to clinical practice.
For Italian programs that want to adopt Vara, Medical Horizons provides the local presence, regulatory familiarity, and clinical network needed to deploy AI responsibly at scale.
Why this matters
Italy’s screening programs are now in the early window between guideline and implementation. The decisions made in this period (which AI, which deployment model, which evidence base) will shape how AI is used in Italian breast cancer screening for years to come.
The case for AI in screening rests on real-world evidence at scale, not pilot studies or marketing claims. Italy has set a high bar by anchoring its recommendation in clinical evidence. The partnership between Vara and Medical Horizons is built to meet that bar: bringing the largest body of prospective real-world evidence in mammography AI into Italian screening through a partner who knows the system from the inside.
Italy has set the European standard. We are honored to help answer the question of how well AI gets deployed alongside Medical Horizons and Italy’s screening community.