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When I set about forecasting the biggest health and wellness trends for 2025, preventative healthcare came up time and again. This is the idea that by being incredibly body literate and taking steps to understand the state of your health now, you can avoid illness later.
I’ve spoken with scores of doctors and health professionals who are passionate about educating the public about ways to prevent ill health and maintain a healthy body and mind. These experts believe that by making small changes and testing health markers regularly, we can live longer and avoid having to rely on imperfect public healthcare solutions that might let us down.
There are, of course, a few issues with this argument. The first is that many people rely on systems such as the NHS because they can’t afford to privately test health markers and pre-empt illness. The second is that unless you’re a keen biohacker or a biology nerd, health tests can be difficult to understand. Where do we even begin with private and personalised testing if we don’t know what we should be testing for? After all, preventative healthcare is about testing while you’re still healthy, not when you’re already sick.
A new kind of health test
I am a so-called “biohacker nerd”, so when I was invited by Neko to try a new full-body health scan, I knew what aspects of my health would be tested. However, Neko aims to take almost all the guesswork out of the preventative testing experience, regardless of how much you know. So whether I had entered the building with my current knowledge of preventative health or none, I’d still have left as clued up as I was after the experience.
The test, which has been described as a full health MOT, takes one hour and costs £300 – which seems expensive for the average person. However, when you break down the cost of everything the Neko scan offers – mole mapping alone is usually a fairly costly – it seems much more reasonable. This test provides millions of data points that you’d otherwise rack up a much higher cost testing individually.
Perhaps this is why the waiting list for Neko is 10,000 people strong. It essentially replaces the need to have multiple tests across countless appointments at different clinics each charging different fees. Instead, everything happens at once in a 60-minute appointment, with the results being explained by a doctor after the tests.
The scan experience
The basement lab where the testing is conducted is all very sci-fi. Everything is pristine and I felt as though I was in a Stanley Kubrick movie as I donned a pale yellow dressing gown and stepped inside a giant floodlit tube. I was then asked to remove my gown and stand naked in the tube while cameras captured 2,000 images of my body from all angles, recording every mole, freckle and vein.
Next, I was asked to lie down on a table and was hooked up to ECGs, vials of my blood were taken to be analysed and my grip strength was tested. This is followed by an eye health check and an assessment of my heart and lungs. Two nurses used lasers to scan my wrists and check the brachial index of my ankles and afterwards, a doctor gave me a full skin exam.
After all the scanning was finished, I stepped into another room to discuss my results. Everything was presented to me on a large screen in easy-to-understand diagrams and charts – like Spotify wrapped for health. Given that Neko was created by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Eke, who co-founded Spotify back in 2006, this is no accident. In a single hour, the scan had mapped my entire body and AI had crystallised the data sets, delivering them to the doctor to be checked and then presented in a slideshow that says, “This is your life”.
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My favourite part of the experience was learning that my heart age is actually five years younger than my actual age and that I’m in excellent health. Over the past few years, I’ve been working hard on taking better care of myself and attempting to reverse the symptoms of stress and inflammation so it was edifying to learn this. However, a lot can change in a year, whether that’s due to habits and lifestyle, genetics or external factors so the doctor suggested I book in for another scan in a year’s time.
The idea behind an annual scan is that by gathering a data set every 365 days (or thereabouts), Neko’s team will be able to track and observe fluctuations in your health and advise you on what to keep an eye on and how to maintain your health levels. Maybe even reverse your biological age.
Co-founder Nilsonne, explains that “70 per cent of healthcare costs are tied to chronic diseases, which are largely preventable or can be greatly delayed by early interventions”.
He says, “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. We’ve created a new category of medical device that can collect people’s medical information very cheaply and conveniently and track it across time.”
For someone like me, a relatively fit and healthy person, the scan might only provide peace of mind and a way to track the maintenance of my health year after year. For others, the Neko scan can identify issues that might need further medical attention before they worsen. In the company’s first year, 14 per cent of people who used the body scan needed some form of medical support and one per cent received life-saving interventions as a result of the testing.
The verdict
The nerd in me loved the whole experience and knowing what I do about personalised testing, I’d say the scan is actually excellent value for money, particularly if you’re only having one a year. If you’re already into preventative health and longevity, you’ll know how expensive a single blood test can be and how impossible it is to get a blood test from the NHS if you’re just curious about the state of your health. NHS appointments are reserved for people who are sick and who really need them.
The founders of Neko want to prevent sickness from occurring in the first place. It’s a simple idea, but one that seems to have stuck a chord – the company has just raised $260m in funding to expand its offering.
However, it’s worth mentioning that the scan is a one-size-fits-all situation. Every person has the same set of variables tested and though this can provide a huge raft of insights on how to adjust lifestyles and take better care of oneself, it’s not a case of coming in and asking for what you think you might need. The test is the same for everyone.
Factors like hormone health are missing from the blood test portion of the scan and for someone like me, I’d have loved a walkthrough with the doctor on those, as well as my cholesterol levels and propensity for diabetes.
The slideshow was the best part, though. It made every variable easy to understand, the doctor discussed my habits and lifestyle with me and showed me a health projection for the next few years. Everyone would benefit from seeing the individual aspects of their health broken down in this way and being given actionable advice and it’s something that’s missing from most healthcare appointments. My advice was fairly simple: drink more water, lift more weights and keep doing what you’re doing, but my knowledge of my body is unmatched at this point.
Of course, the test is still £300 which is a huge reach for some. However, while I was lying on the table with wires stuck to my chest I kept thinking about a quote from biohacking expert Tim Gray: “If you think wellness is expensive, then try illness.”
The Neko scan isn’t a run-of-the-mill service and it certainly isn’t cheap, but when you consider how much it’s worth in comparison to individual testing appointments and what you get for your money, I actually think the price is pretty decent. Then, of course, there’s the value of your health for years to come. We talk about health being priceless and about it being an asset that we have no control over but with more companies like Neko Health popping up every day, and our collective awareness of good health growing, perhaps we now have more control than ever. It’s a comforting thought if you can get around the waitlist.
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