In the 2016 movie Passengers, the crew of a spacecraft bound for a distant planet had access to a scanning chamber known as Autodoc that could instantly diagnose their medical problems and even predict the time of their death.
I’m reminded of this, and countless other sci-fi plots, as I strip off my robe and step semi-naked into the gleaming capsule of the Neko Body Scan. Like Autodoc, it promises to conduct a comprehensive examination of my health – inside and out – within minutes, and, while unable to estimate the timing of my demise (yet), it can identify whether I’m at imminent or future risk of developing some of the biggest killers and causes of chronic ill health.
Healthy as I may feel on the outside, the prospect of learning whether 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 instructs me to close my eyes and keep still.
Neko is the brainchild of the Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek, who hopes to achieve the same for health that 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 chief executive, Hjalmar Nilsonne, said: “Since 70% of healthcare costs are tied to chronic diseases, which are largely preventable or can be greatly delayed by early interventions, it seems pretty obvious that the healthcare system everybody actually wants 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 needed 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 across time.”
Costing £299, a Neko scan incorporates high-resolution 2D and 3D photography, thermal imaging, then detailed cardiovascular measurements to map how the heart is pumping and blood is moving through the arteries, veins and capillaries.
Patients’ grip strength and eye pressure is also measured, then a small sample of their blood is taken and sent via vacuum tube to a lab upstairs for processing. Finally, these thousands of data points are crunched by artificial intelligence and delivered to an in-house GP, who makes the final health assessment and delivers it to the customer 15 minutes later.
In my case, the verdict was reassuring: my risk of cardiovascular disease and the tens 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 triggered by the cold that has since materialised – and only average grip strength for my age: a reminder that I should restart strength training after a summer off.
Other customers have been dealt 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 the individuals for conditions that the vast majority (90%) were unaware they had. In 1% of cases, patients received potentially life-saving interventions for conditions such as aortic aneurysms and malignant melanomas.
“One gentleman had a cardiovascular anomaly that looked strange, so we booked him an ultrasound with our sonographer, who confirmed that there was a major anomaly,” said Nilsonne. “We sent the referral [to a cardiologist], and within two weeks, this gentleman was getting surgery. 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 Centre for Optimal Health, agreed that the potential for these types of scans was vast. “Early diagnosis of disease is hugely important and could potentially reduce the burden on the NHS,” she said.
“However, at this stage, it is difficult to assess its utility without having a full understanding of their methodology, the way they analyse the ‘scans’, and, importantly, the depth, breadth and diversity of the training datasets used for generation of their AI models and algorithms.”
Prof Azeem Majeed, a GP and expert on primary care and public health at Imperial College London, said the Neko Body Scan was more technologically advanced, and included additional testing, compared with the NHS Health Check programme, which screens people aged between 40 and 74 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 customers) without clear benefits”.
He added: “It is essential that Neko (and companies offering similar services) audit their outcomes to see how much benefit they are bringing to customers.
“While Neko provides some initial feedback on the test results, the 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 conducted further investigations. “If a referral outside the Neko system into the NHS is needed, the referral will include a level of detail that will make it instantly obvious how to prioritise that patient,” he said.
