Our partnership with Neko Health: building a proactive healthcare system
Too many diseases are diagnosed late. A massive 75-80% of healthcare spend is focused on chronic diseases, many of which can be reversed or better managed by early detection.
Not only does this cost billions, stretching resources to the limit, it also increases the suffering of the people involved. Most of us have experienced somebody close to us struggling with heart disease, diabetes or certain cancers, and know first hand the frustration of wondering if more could have been done sooner. We’re stuck in a reactive approach to the most fundamental aspects of our lives.
Early detection, long before symptoms arise, is clearly necessary, yet it’s all too easy to deprioritise our health. Especially when doctors and public healthcare providers don’t have the time or resources to see less urgent patients.
So how do we get people to their doctor, for diseases they don’t know they have? Having spent time with Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek - co-founders of Neko Health - we believe their non-intrusive Body Scans, coupled with data analytics, could be the answer for a radical new type of healthcare.
Imagine booking a 10 minute full body scan in your lunch break. This is followed by an in-person doctor’s consultation where you receive the results and recommendations, and then a follow-up report is made available via an app. The tech is able to assist medics looking for a variety of skin conditions and skin cancers, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. That’s all without invasive testing, or waiting for unpleasant symptoms to take hold. The cost is €250.
Neko’s vision is to create a system that can help people stay healthy through early detection, giving the patient the power to take action sooner. The tech launched in Sweden earlier this year, selling out of slots within two hours of launch and now with a waiting list of 10,000 people.
Neko Health is exactly the type of mission that gets us excited at Atomico. It’s that rare combination of a firm with a purpose and outsized ambition, and founders with a world class track record. They’re solving a problem we can all relate to, with the potential to fundamentally transform global healthcare forever. In the near-term it can benefit patients, but longer-term it could reduce the burden on healthcare providers globally, improving the support available from our family doctors. I am thrilled to be working with Daniel and Hjalmar on fulfilling their vision to take healthcare from reactive to preventative.
There’s a basic idea in tech that any new product should be at least 10x better than previous ways of doing the same thing. Neko Health is an example of a clear consumer need, with no existing infrastructure to answer the problem.
