In 2018, in a world where you could stream almost any song you want on-demand, on the move, from your iPhone, Spotify founder Daniel Ek decided consumers would soon expect the same convenience from healthcare. Health-tracking wearables like Whoop and Oura were around three years in, and had sparked something of a data-tracking obsession among the longevity-minded millennial consumer. Ek tracked down a fellow Swedish entrepreneur, Hjalmar Nilsonne, and proposed they work on a new startup — one to “rebuild healthcare from scratch”.
The son of two doctors, Nilsonne had vowed he’d never work in health, but warmed up to the idea. He became Ek’s co-founder and CEO of Neko Health once he realized the problem with the healthcare system they wanted to solve was more behavioral than it was medical. “Our current healthcare systems are fundamentally built on reactive care: when you have a problem, you go to the doctor,” says Nilsonne, who reports that 80-90% of patients in the current global healthcare system are suffering from chronic diseases, which he believes can be prevented if detected early enough.
“Why haven’t we been able to provide more preventative care? The ultra-wealthy have access to it — they go to fancy residential clinics that cost thousands of dollars for days and days spent doing scans. So we asked ourselves: how could we advance new technology to provide similar insights, but 10 or 100 times cheaper?” After five years developing the technology, the pair launched Neko’s first health scan clinic in Stockholm in 2023.
Neko hardly invented the private health scan category — US-based Prenuvo and Ezra had launched their comprehensive full-body MRI scans some five years earlier. But its hour-long AI-powered private health check-up offered a faster, more scalable alternative. At €300, it costs about a tenth of these incumbents. But the futuristic, mint green clinics — designed by the same lead architect as Apple’s Fifth Avenue store, Franquibel Lima — make the one-hour scan, with end-to-end proprietary technology, feel luxury beyond its price tag.
Upon entering the Neko clinic, you’re ushered into a modernist changing room to put on a dressing gown and slippers designed by Scandi brand Hay. Then, it’s time to strip down to your underwear for a 360-degree, AI-powered skin mapping scan, as an AI-generated female voice guides you to turn while it takes more than 2,000 photographs of every mole and freckle on your skin. A nurse then takes a full blood test, ECG, and grip strength test. Instant results are then interpreted by a doctor in a one-on-one 30-minute private consultation, against a backdrop of a moving 3D visualization of your body on a screen.
