The archive · Health & Care · Product decision · 2018–2026
Salva Health bets portable AI screening can close LatAm's mammogram gap; wins Disrupt 2024
Colombian startup Salva Health built Julieta, a portable breast-screening device, won TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield, and is charging payors per test.
Salva Health
What the business is
A medtech startup selling breast-cancer screening as a service: clinics get Julieta devices for free and payors are charged per screening, with an AI model assessing malignancy risk.
Starting capital：About $2.5 million raised in total, including an undisclosed round with Epic Angels, Asiri Impact Fund, Impact Assets, EWA Capital and family offices (2025) and a $1.5 million round led by EWA Capital (2026).
How it started
Six years before her startup won TechCrunch Disrupt, Valentina Agudelo found a gap in breast-cancer survival rates between Latin America and the developed world while researching for a college entrepreneurship competition: late detection, driven by rural populations with no access to mammograms. She and her two best friends sketched a portable detection device, and shortly after the competition she founded Salva Health in Colombia, later working through an MBA at INSEAD while keeping the company her focus.
What happened
Salva Health developed Julieta, a small device that attaches electrodes to the breast, measures tissue density with electrical bioimpedance and returns results within minutes to a phone, tablet or computer. It partnered with insurer Grupo Sura on clinical trials and an AI model to predict breast-cancer risk, reached 13 employees, and in October 2024 won the $100,000 Startup Battlefield prize at TechCrunch Disrupt, beating more than 2,000 applicants. By September 2025 it had INVIMA approval in Colombia and paid pilots with the National League Against Cancer, the Air Force and insurers including Sura, and was raising capital with Epic Angels, Asiri Impact Fund, Impact Assets, EWA Capital and family offices, aiming at 500,000 tests a year by 2026.
How it ended up
Still scaling: as of August 2026 Salva Health had raised a $1.5 million round led by EWA Capital (about $2.5 million total), screened more than 2,500 women in Colombia and Venezuela, and won the Princesa de Girona 2025 award, with FDA recognition and expansion across LatAm, Africa and India planned.
Background
Salva Health was founded in Colombia around 2018 by Valentina Agudelo and her two best friends after a college entrepreneurship competition surfaced a brutal gap: breast cancer is highly treatable caught early, yet large parts of Latin America have no mammogram access, so women are diagnosed late. The founding bet was that a small, portable screening device could move early detection out of hospitals and into everyday clinics.
The product is Julieta, a device that attaches electrodes to the breast, measures tissue density through electrical bioimpedance, and returns a risk assessment within minutes to a phone, tablet or computer, backed by an AI model developed with insurer Grupo Sura. Salva does not sell the device: clinics get it free, and health payors are charged per screening — a model chosen to keep control of the device and the data it produces.
The startup won the $100,000 Startup Battlefield prize at TechCrunch Disrupt in October 2024, beating more than 2,000 applicants, then moved from regulatory queue to market: INVIMA approval in Colombia, paid pilots with the National League Against Cancer, the Air Force and insurers including Sura, and a goal of 500,000 tests a year by 2026. By August 2026 it had raised about $2.5 million total, screened more than 2,500 women in Colombia and Venezuela, and won the Princesa de Girona 2025 award, with FDA recognition and expansion into Africa and India on its roadmap.
What has to be true
- Mammography infrastructure is expensive and concentrated in cities; a portable, radiation-free device can reach the rural majority that never gets screened.
- The hardware-as-a-service model — free device, per-test payment from insurers — aligns Salva with the payor that benefits most from early detection and keeps data flowing back to improve the AI.
- Winning Startup Battlefield gave a two-person-founded Colombian medtech global credibility, press and $100,000 before its first big market launch.
- INVIMA approval plus commercial-treaty recognition lets one regulatory green light open several Latin American markets at once.
What can be applied
When the bottleneck is access, not technology, the business model has to follow the bottleneck: give hardware away, sell the screening as a service to whoever pays for outcomes.
Aftermath
As of August 2026, Salva Health is live in Colombia with INVIMA approval and paid pilots with insurers and health institutions, having screened more than 2,500 women in Colombia and Venezuela. It raised about $2.5 million total, most recently $1.5 million led by EWA Capital, and plans to manufacture at scale, reach 500,000 annual tests by 2026, and pursue FDA recognition plus expansion across Latin America, Africa and India. The open question is whether payors will pay per test at a price that makes the model work outside pilots.
Sources
- Salva Health wants to lower breast cancer mortality with its affordable screening device
- And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2024 is: Salva Health
- Epic Angels invests in Colombia's Salva Health and its Julieta device
- Salva Health levanta US$1.5M para expandir su tecnología de detección de cáncer de mama
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