“After four years of intense research and product development, today we officially launch Neko Health,” the post reads. “The company was founded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek with a vision to create a healthcare system that can help people stay healthy through preventative measures and early detection.”
According to a translated version of Neko Health website, the Swedish company’s non-invasive full-body scanner can detect and measure the growth of birthmarks, rashes and age spots. It also uses a separate scanner to detect any abnormalities in heart function, blood pressure, and pulse throughout the body.
Neko says the company’s 360-degree body scanner comes equipped with more than 70 sensors that collect more than “50 million data points on the skin, heart, vessels, respiration, microcirculation, and more.” . This data is then analyzed by a “self-learning AI-powered system” that explains the results to doctors and patients. Clients get results in their appointment and can even view and track their results in an accompanying app.
“Our mission is to build a proactive health system that focuses on disease prevention,” Nilsonne writes in a post on LinkedIn, citing the rising costs of healthcare in Sweden and the European Union. Full-body scans, which Neko says only take a few minutes, are currently open to the public in Sweden and cost SEK 2,000 (or about $190 USD). At the time of writing this article, the scans are currently out of stock.
Ek’s foray into the healthcare industry isn’t exactly a surprise. Rumors about the start-up they have been around since november, and Ek has long hinted at getting involved in healthcare. In 2013, a report financial time revealed that Ek “spends free hours thinking about how to fix a ‘screwed up’ healthcare system.” “I’m not the inventor, but I may be the dumb enough person to go against the system and try to beat it on its own terms,” he said at the time.
It’s obviously too early to say what kind of impact Neko Health could have on the healthcare industry, but it does sound promising. Similar technology has emerged in the past, with Facebook and New York University teaming up to make MRIs faster using AI, and researchers developing AI technology that scans your retina and predicts your risk of heart disease. But Neko Health is using this technology on a larger and more accessible scale, and it’s exciting to think about its potential.
