A.I. Health scans are going to become the Norm

🩺 The A.I. of preventative healthcare is going to get pretty crazy.

Hello Everyone,

With aging populations the cost of healthcare will rise dramatically in the developing world and places like China. One trend to combat this will be more A.I. enabled early diagnosis and screening.

The A.I. of preventative healthcare will be very lucrative, so I’m watching some of the startups in the healthcare space specifically around this. One of the teams that has caught my eye is Neko, Daniel Ek’s (Spotify) project.

This will be a short post about them and their new funding round.

A post shared on LinkedIn names Ek as the co-founder of a startup, called Neko Health, which specializes in providing body scans powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Daniel Ek is a Swedish entrepreneur born in 1983. In 2006 he co-founded Spotify, that means he was just 23 years old at the time.

A.I. will bring many changes into our healthcare system, including personalized patient experience and precision medicine, but especially it appears, augmented early diagnosis at scale that can really cut healthcare costs of all types globally. The unique value proposition of the startup sounds far-fetched, but it’s in all of my articles on A.I. in healthcare, a very clear and pounced trend. A lot of the near-term applications of A.I. in healthcare are early diagnosis based.

So what if you could have them all wrapped up in a single product? The next era of Preventative medicine?

“After four years of intense research and product development, we are officially launching Neko Health today,” the post reads. “The company was founded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek with the vision to create a healthcare system that can help people stay healthy through preventive measures and early detection.”

We know A.I. at the intersection of healthcare will build some of the most impactful technology companies of the future. So Neko Health, a Stockholm, Sweden-based preventative health care technology company, on July 5th, 2023, raised €60M in Series A funding. That’s a pretty big Series A, to be honest.

Daniel Ek on LinkedIn

Participating in the round are Lakestar, Atomico, and General Catalyst. 
 
This funding round not only underscores the faith our investors have in our company's mission and potential but also provides us with the resources and insights to accelerate our growth. As part of the round, Dr. Klaus Hommels and Niklas Zennström will join the board together with Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek. We look forward to leveraging their wealth of experience as we continue to navigate our ambitious path forward!
 
The Neko Body Scan is currently only available in Stockholm, but we will soon launch our health centers across Europe. Sign up for the waitlist today on our website to ensure you're among the first to gain access as Neko Health expands.
 

Neko Body Scan

So from the countries that brought you Ikea, Spotify and other great things, how about that A.I. body scan?

Hjalmar and Daniel founded Neko after recognizing the opportunity to transform healthcare from a sick care system to a consumer-centric, data-driven system. Their thesis centered around a simple belief: combining non-invasive, state-of-the-art technology together with a sleek consumer experience into an affordable bundle was the only way to catalyze this step change.

• Non-invasive

• State-of-the-art

• Sleek consumer experience

• Affordable bundle
  

Today, Neko’s 10 minute body scan uses 70 sensors to build an accurate picture of a person’s health. A physician consultation immediately follows to relay the results and recommendations generated from the 50 million data points collected. And they’re only getting started!

• 70 sensors, in 10 minutes.

Who Invested so far?

The round was led by Lakestar, with participation from Atomico and General Catalyst. As part of this round, Klaus Hommels (Lakestar) and Niklas Zennström (Atomico) will join the company’s board together with the founders.

So in dollars, the Series A is $65 million. Totally the Ikea of Early diagnosis non-invasive health scans. And frankly, I’m very bullish on early diagnosis products at scale, I think they will save the healthcare system a fortune as populations will age rapidly in our weird demographic pyramids that will become a bit inverted! Okay, a lot!

Ek has long expressed a personal interest in tackling a “screwed up” healthcare system, as he put it to the Financial Times almost a decade ago. Good find by TechCrunch.

TL;DR

The company aims to revolutionize the health industry through artificial intelligence (AI)-driven full-body scans, specifically focusing on preventative healthcare. 

Who among you would pay a subscription for such a service to have a certain number of scans per year? As you age into your 60, 70s and 80s, I bet it will be a lot of you. Having early diagnosis Neko clinics popping up in major cities around the world? That would be a great acquisition target for someone like Google Health circa 2027 to 2029.

Made in Sweden

Neko Health, which currently only has body scanning clinics in Stockholm, says the funding will help the company expand across Europe.

So what are the healthcare products of the future enabled by A.I.? I think this might be one of them. We are going to see smart clinics, smart hospitals and a lot of better early diagnostics. A lot of that will become automated.

How will A.I. transform well-being, and not just disease and healthcare management of our various conditions? Early diagnosis and preventative healthcare will be a major part of that.

What can the Scan do for Instance?

According to a translated version of Neko Health’s website, the Swedish company’s non-invasive full-body scanner can detect and measure the growth of birthmarks, rashes, and age spots. It also utilizes a separate scanner to pick up on any abnormalities in heart function, blood pressure, and pulse throughout the body.

• Spot early signs

• Detect abnormalities

When nano-medicine arrives this will also mean deeper kinds of scans. Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology. As our technology improves, this will also include a range of genomic and even synthetic biology alterations I’m guessing. Can you imagine the range of services such a consumer product could bundle? Early diagnosis in an attractive package, getting faster and more affordable each decade?

Each scan apparently takes around 10 minutes and costs €250, according to the company, and is followed by an in-person consultation where the results are explained.

Disease Prevention and Early Diagnosis at Scale?

For Healthcare and the challenge of reducing Healthcare costs for an aging population, it’s going to get very dire folks. I’m not sure we realize the extent of this. Today in the U.S. your mean population is 40, but what happens when it’s higher?

• After a successful launch in Sweden with overwhelming demand, the company is looking to expand across Europe

• The technology can play a significant role in shifting the healthcare system from reactive symptom treatment to disease prevention