medara, Inc.

Founders, Backgrounds, and Bench

medara, Inc. is led by founder and CEO Kendra Batchelder, PhD, a medical researcher with a background in electrical engineering and a prior co-founding role at WAVED Medical [ZoomInfo]. The company is an academic spinout from the Sabuncu Lab at Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine, established through the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute Runway Startup Program [Cornell Tech]. No other senior team members are publicly identified.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Founder role and academic affiliation confirmed; no independent public corroboration for other senior team members.

Summary and Signal

medara, Inc. is an academic spinout building predictive AI to identify breast cancer earlier in high-risk patients, a clinical challenge where current screening guidelines and tools fall short [Cornell Tech]. Founded in January 2025, the company is commercializing research from the Sabuncu Lab at Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine, which developed an AI system capable of analyzing serial medical images to detect subtle, clinically relevant changes over time [news.cornell.edu, 2025]. Its core differentiation is a focus on short-term risk assessment for patients who have recently received negative mammography or MRI results, aiming to catch cancers that would otherwise be missed until a later, more dangerous stage [medara.co].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Core claims are sourced from the company and its academic affiliate, but key operational details lack independent public corroboration.

Company Overview

medara, Inc. is a health-tech startup founded in January 2025, emerging from the research environment of Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine [Cornell Tech]. The company was established as part of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute Runway Startup Program [Cornell Tech]. Its founding is directly tied to research from the Sabuncu Lab, which spans Cornell Tech and the Department of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, focusing on machine learning applications for medical imaging [sabuncu.engineering.cornell.edu]. The company is headquartered in New York, NY [Cornell Tech].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Company formation, affiliation, and founder role confirmed; no independent public corroboration for operational details.

The Product and the Stack

The core product is an AI system designed to analyze serial medical images for the purpose of predicting short-term breast cancer risk in high-risk patients. The company's public positioning centers on a clinical gap: high-risk patients who receive negative results from standard mammography or MRI screenings, but who may still develop cancer in the near term. medara's technology aims to identify these cases earlier by detecting subtle, clinically relevant changes across a patient's longitudinal imaging history [medara.co] [news.cornell.edu, 2025]. The underlying technology is a research spinout from the Sabuncu Lab at Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine [news.cornell.edu, 2025]. The product is built for a B2B workflow, targeting integration with regulated healthcare providers and imaging centers [Cornell Tech].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Core technology claims are corroborated by multiple Cornell-affiliated research publications, but commercial product specifics and deployment evidence are not publicly available.

The Market They Are Entering

The market for AI in breast cancer imaging is defined by a persistent clinical gap, where current screening tools fail a significant subset of high-risk patients. A 2023 report estimated the global AI in medical imaging market at $1.2 billion in 2022, projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 30.1% to reach $5.1 billion by 2028 [MarketsandMarkets, 2023]. Demand is driven by high false-negative rates in mammography, estimated between 10% and 30% depending on breast density and patient age [PMC].

Metric	Value
AI in Medical Imaging 2022	$1.2B
AI in Medical Imaging 2028 (projected)	$5.1B

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing is from a third-party analyst report for an analogous, broader market. Clinical demand drivers are cited from peer-reviewed literature.

The Competitive Field

medara operates in a specialized niche of AI for breast cancer risk assessment. Competitive differentiation hinges on clinical validation and access to longitudinal patient data.

Company	Positioning	Stage / Funding	Notable Differentiator
medara, Inc.	Predicts short-term breast cancer risk in high-risk patients with negative screenings using longitudinal imaging analysis.	Pre-seed; participant in Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute Runway Startup Program.	Focus on short-term risk prediction via serial image analysis, anchored in research from Cornell Tech's Sabuncu Lab.
Volpara	Enterprise breast imaging analytics and density assessment software.	Publicly traded (ASX: VHT); $35.6M revenue FY 2024.	Established commercial footprint with FDA-cleared products for density assessment and workflow tools.
LIBRA	Academic research initiative focused on breast density measurement and personalized risk models.	Research consortium; not a commercial entity.	Deep academic research into mammographic density and its genetic/environmental determinants.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitor identification is confirmed, but detailed comparative data on private companies is limited to public positioning.

Opportunity

If medara can translate its academic research into a clinically validated and commercially adopted tool, it could capture a significant portion of the growing market for AI-powered early cancer detection in high-risk populations. The headline opportunity is to become the standard-of-care risk assessment layer for breast imaging centers serving high-risk patients. The company's grounding in published research from the Sabuncu Lab provides a credible foundation for this outcome [Cornell Tech] [news.cornell.edu, 2025].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Opportunity analysis is based on cited company claims and published research; commercial comparables and market data are from public sources.

Sources

1. [Cornell Tech] Medara, Inc. - Cornell Tech | https://tech.cornell.edu/built/medara-inc/
2. [news.cornell.edu, 2025] AI system can analyze serial medical images | Cornell Chronicle | https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/02/ai-system-can-analyze-serial-medical-images
3. [medara.co] Pioneering Predictive AI for Healthcare - Medara | https://medara.co/about_us
4. [LinkedIn, 2026] Audrey Chan - Houston, Texas, United States | https://www.linkedin.com/in/audrey-chan-2b6992247/
5. [sabuncu.engineering.cornell.edu] Sabuncu Lab | https://sabuncu.engineering.cornell.edu/
6. [obgyn.weillcornell.org] A Versatile AI System for Analyzing Series of Medical Images | Obstetrics & Gynecology | https://obgyn.weillcornell.org/news/versatile-ai-system-analyzing-series-medical-images
7. [healthcare-in-europe.com] AI tool detects changes in series of medical images • healthcare-in-europe.com | https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/ai-lilac-detect-changes-series-medical-images.html
8. [ZoomInfo] Contact Kendra Batchelder, Email: k***@medara.co & Phone Number | Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Medara - ZoomInfo | https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Kendra-Batchelder/5409122149
9. [MarketsandMarkets, 2023] AI in Medical Imaging Market | https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/ai-in-medical-imaging-market-22519734.html
10. [PMC] Artificial intelligence in breast cancer imaging: risk stratification, lesion detection and classification, treatment planning and prognosis, a narrative review - PMC | https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9834285/
11. [FDA, 2022] Proposed Regulatory Framework for Modifications to Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)-Based Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) | https://www.fda.gov/media/122535/download
12. [Volpara Annual Report, 2024] Volpara Health Technologies Annual Report 2024 | https://www.volparaholdings.com/investors/annual-reports/