In the 2016 movie Passengers, the crew of a spaceship bound for a distant planet had access to a scanning room known as Autodoc that could instantly diagnose their medical problems and even predict the time of their death.
I am reminded of this, and countless other sci-fi plots, as I undress and half-naked in the gleaming capsule of the Neko Body Scan. Like Autodoc, it promises to do a comprehensive examination of my health – inside and out – within minutes, and while it can’t (yet) estimate the timing of my death, it can identify whether I’m at imminent or future risk walking to develop from the biggest killers and causes of chronic ill health.
However healthy I may feel on the outside, the prospect of learning if there is some hidden nastiness lurking on my health horizon feels too tempting to refuse. The doors of the pod slide shut, and a soothing female voice orders me to close my eyes and be still.
Neko is the brainchild of the Spotify co-founder Daniel Mewho hopes to achieve the same for health as he did for music: redesigning the industry from scratch, starting with the technologies that exist today, rather than the hotchpotch of approaches it has relied on for decades.
Neko’s co-founder and CEO, Hjalmar Nilsonne, said: “Given that 70% of healthcare costs are linked to chronic diseases, which are largely preventable or greatly delayed by early interventions, it seems quite obvious that the healthcare system that everyone actually want is a preventive one that creates health, rather than being a medicine dispenser for the people who are already sick.
“The idea we had was very simple. We had to create a new category of medical device that could collect people’s medical information very cheaply and conveniently, then we could start tracking it over time.”
A Neko scan costs £299, and includes high-resolution 2D and 3D photography, thermal imaging, then detailed cardiovascular measurements to map how the heart pumps and blood moves through the veins, arteries and capillaries.
Patients’ grip strength and eye pressure are also measured, then a small sample of their blood is taken and sent via vacuum tube to a laboratory upstairs for processing. Finally, these thousands of data points are crunched by artificial intelligence and delivered to an in-house GP, who performs the final health assessment and delivers it to the customer 15 minutes later.
In my case, the verdict was reassuring: my risk for cardiovascular disease and the dozens of other relatively common ailments—including skin cancer, diabetes, immune system disorders, gout, early signs of glaucoma, and various skin conditions—is low. The only points of interest were a slightly elevated white blood cell count – possibly caused by the cold that has since materialized – and only average grip strength for my age: a reminder that I need to start strength training again after a summer off.
Other customers got a sharper wake-up call. According to data from Neko’s first year of operation in Stockholm, during which they scanned 2,707 people aged 22 to 75, further medical attention or monitoring was required by 14% of individuals for conditions of which the vast majority (90%) were unaware . In 1% of cases, patients received potentially life-saving interventions for conditions such as aortic aneurysms and malignant melanomas.
“One man had a cardiovascular abnormality that looked strange, so we booked him an ultrasound with our sonographer, which confirmed that there was a major abnormality,” Nilsonne said. “We have sent the reference [to a cardiologist]and within two weeks this gentleman underwent an operation. In the normal queue he would have waited maybe six to nine months.”
Prof Louise Thomas, the head of the University of Westminster’s Research Center for Optimal Health, agreed that the potential for these types of scans is huge. “Early diagnosis of disease is very important and can potentially reduce the burden on the NHS,” she said.
“However, at this stage it is difficult to evaluate its usefulness without a full understanding of their methodology, the way they analyze the ‘scans’ and, importantly, the depth, breadth and diversity of the training datasets that used for generating their AI models and algorithms.”
Prof Azeem Majeed, a general practitioner and expert in primary care and public health at Imperial College London, said the Neko body scan was more technologically advanced, and included additional tests, compared to the NHS Health Check programme, which between the ages of 40 and 74 examined. for common disease risks.
However, Majeed said that “dealing with the rapid developments in private medical assessments will be challenging for the NHS and it is essential that these assessments add value to people’s health and do not create additional work (or anxiety for clients) without clear benefits “.
He added: “It is essential that Neko (and companies offering similar services) audit their outcomes to see how much benefit they bring to customers.
“While Neko provides initial feedback on the test results, responsibility for ongoing care will largely be the responsibility of the NHS. This could potentially increase the workload for general practices and other parts of the NHS, particularly if patients have findings that ultimately do not require additional treatment.”
Nilsonne said Neko would only contact a patient’s GP once the firm’s own in-house experts – which include cardiologists, dermatologists and sonographers – had carried out further investigations. “If a referral is needed outside the Neko system to the NHS, the referral will include a level of detail that will make it immediately clear how to prioritize that patient,” he said.
