Is Daniel Ek’s Neko Body Scan the Spotify of healthcare? Here’s everything you need to know

Passing through the nondescript Östermalm storefront to the inner sanctum of Neko Health, one is instantly transported into a sci-fi film. Co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, Neko promises to revolutionise healthcare by detecting (and preventing) issues early through futuristic sensors and AI. Well, it certainly looks like the future – all slick chrome surfaces, touch screens and inoffensive pale yellows, bathed in a warm glow. Even the beige Hay bathrobe, provided upon entrance, fits the mood. While the waiting list for an appointment at Neko, which retails for about €200, is almost 10 thousand people long (registration is currently closed for those not referred by a previous Neko-scanner), I was lucky enough to nab a 40-minute slot.

The machine primarily responsible for all the hoopla is the Neko Body Scan; a 360-degree scanner that snapshots every inch of your nearly-naked body (it’s underwear-only in the scan), taking note of every last teeny tiny birthmark (I have 1249 – a rather standard number, I’m told). Ultimately checking for melanoma (or risk of developing melanoma), the whole experience takes 20 seconds. A calming disembodied female voice walks you through every step of the process, telling you when to close your eyes, when to turn around, where to place your feet and how to position your arms (there’s a real life doctor and a nurse on-hand, too). Return to the scan a year later and it will tell you if any new spots have emerged or if any of your existing spots have grown. If one of your spots looks a bit sketchy, the doctor will take an additional photo and send it off to a dermatologist for closer inspection.

Related: The 8 new wellness trends to explore this year

The Black Mirror-esque (albeit less harrowing) vibe of the place is no coincidence. “Consumers have to easily grasp that the thing they’re getting is different, right?” says Neko Health co-founder and CEO Hjalmar Nilsonne. After all, most customers (or as Neko calls them, “members”) aren’t intimately familiar with the ins and outs of AI algorithms and health data. Conveying the “scientific sophistication” of Neko’s offering in a single glance was paramount. “As consumers, we act from our stomach – how do I feel in this process? We had to spend a lot of time saying, ‘What is that emotion?’” Nilsonne says. “It shouldn’t feel like a hospital, it shouldn’t feel like a spa, it’s somewhere in between.” As for the name? “It’s the Japanese word for cat. Cats are associated with good health – nine lives – in almost every culture in the world, especially in Japan where they have these cats,” he says, stretching one arm up, hand flexed forward, to mimic the wave of a lucky ‘beckoning cat' figurine. “We were looking for a name that wasn’t, like, ‘Healthify’.”

After the scan is complete, you lay down on the table for a good old fashioned blood test (nothing out of the ordinary here, however I will note that the nurse was swift and competent). Finally there’s the cardiovascular exam, in which sensors are placed on the body and blood pressure is taken from all four limbs. “Relax,” says the disembodied voice. Finally, a laser, aimed at the arm, measures blood flow. The exam looks for abnormalities in blood pressure and heart function, aiming to cut cardiovascular diseases – the most common cause of death globally – off at the pass. If any significant abnormalities arise, the doctor will refer you to a specialist. Less-worrisome but sub-optimal results are met with suggestions to change one’s diet or exercise regimen.

Nilsonne is familiar with the archaic nature of our healthcare system; he grew up in a family full of doctors. “My grandfather had a clinic here in Stockholm over a hundred years ago,” he says. Both of his parents are doctors and professors and his brother (“he’s the genius in the family”) is a doctor-slash-neuroscientist. And like anyone who grew up with a doctor in the family (guilty), he frequently heard a lot of complaints at the dinner table. “You have this noble calling you go into and then the system is just soul-crushing both for doctors and for patients,” he says. “If we could time machine my grandfather over to the world we live in today, everything would be extremely unusual and surprising – he would freak out. The one place he could go to feel at home would be a doctor’s office because not much has changed in the hundred years since he was a doctor.” An innate tech guy, Nilsonne made a name for himself as an entrepreneur in the clean energy space.

But the seed of Neko came from Daniel Ek, who set out to do to healthcare what he’d done to music – change the whole game. Four years ago, having just IPO’ed Spotify and with a boatload of cash in his pocket, the entrepreneur wanted to do something positive for society. “He had a secret passion for 10 or 15 years to do something in healthcare,” Nilsonne says. “So he pinged me like, ‘Hey, I’m the CEO of Spotify and I’m going to keep doing that job, but I’d love to see someone take on the healthcare experience’.” Recalling those dinner table conversations, Nilsonne was reluctant at first, but ultimately gave in. “The human body is the most incredible mystery,” he says. “It’s 2023 and we still debate what healthy food is.”

Related: Biohacking: Buzzword or bonafide? We put the wellness trend to the test

So the duo founded Neko with the goal of creating an entirely new healthcare system, one that was “not driven by trying to fix all the people that are already sick and in demand of treatment”. Instead, the proposed system would identify disease before it “had a change to spread and get serious”. “If you think about it, your doctor today has no idea what’s happening with your health until the moment you step into his office,” Nilsonne says. “At that point, you already have a problem.” The result is, of course, the Neko Body Scan, which “non-invasively captures millions of data points in our health". Supplemented with the blood test and cardiovascular examination, it gives the customer a quick and thorough check-up and a baseline to test against year after year. Once enough clinics pop up to satisfy demand (more are set to open later this year), it’s easy to see how Neko will become a routine constant in all of our lives.

The last step in the Neko experience is getting the results. A digital avatar of my body pops up on the screen as the doctor walks me through the details of my examination. There’s nothing especially alarming (though I’m a bit disappointed by my lack of grip strength) and I’m thrilled to learn that I have near-perfect blood (“You could be a blood model,” the doctor tells me). Before I get dressed she texts me my results and asks if I’d like to set up an appointment for a year from now. Of course I do.