Neko Health expands in London with a new Spitalfields site. We take a scan

Alongside the redeveloped Spitalfields Market to the north-east of the City of London is the latest outpost of Swedish start-up Neko Health. The new location follows on from its debut London clinic in Marylebone, which followed the company’s first scanning suite in Stockholm. Housed in a steel pavilion designed, like the market redevelopment alongside it, by Foster & Partners, the new clinic is Neko Health’s largest facility to date.

‘The canvas we can paint on is dependent on the real estate we find,’ says Hjalmar Nilsonne, who co-founded the company with Daniel Ek, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Spotify and tech investment firm Prima Materia. Spitalfields is the largest scanning suite to date, covering 8,000 sq ft. Its six suites can process up to 30,000 scans every year, particularly helpful when the company already has 100,000 people on its waiting list.

Before we dive into the refined aesthetics of Neko’s space, it’s worth circling back to discover the company’s origins. Nilsonne is an engineer by training, despite coming from a family with three generations of doctors. After a spell working on climate-focused energy companies, specialising in data analysis, he was contacted by Ek, fresh from the Spotify IPO. ‘He wanted to put his capital towards something meaningful, and suggested healthcare,’ Nilsonne recalls, ‘I knew it was such an unbelievably difficult system to change [in Sweden]’.

Nevertheless, Ek asked how he would go about ‘starting a healthcare system from scratch’, pointing out that regardless of the state of your nation’s healthcare system, most people take a reactive approach. ‘You only go to the doctor when you’re ill. Most healthcare costs come from chronic diseases. Prevention and early detection could change all this,’ Nilsonne says, pointing out that the Hippocratic oath says, ‘I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure’.

The challenges were myriad, not least the question of how to gather data and then what to do with it all. Nilsonne’s expertise in applying statistical inference and analysis formed the bedrock of the Neko approach. ‘It has to be super easy and cheap to download all your health data,’ he stresses. Even so, after the company was formed in 2018, it still took over four years to explore all the ways that health data could gathered, stored and presented. Another challenge was to actually make customers care sufficiently to undertake a scan.

‘I was influenced by my ten years in the energy space,’ Nilsonne says. ‘Climate change posed a similar challenge. In the end, changing things from within was the good fight – a company like Tesla provided a vision of a future that was exciting enough for consumers to want to live in it.’ Regardless of how that particular story is going, it’s true that Tesla created a momentum that has changed the entire auto industry. Neko sees itself on a similar path. ‘We’re going directly to consumers, creating a warm, inviting space that paints a picture of a possible future,’ Nilsonne says. ‘There’s no waiting for results – it all happens there and then.’

At a time when the ways of tracking our health and lifestyle metrics are only increasing in scope and accuracy, Neko has to find a sweet spot between services that are essentially free – your smartwatch – and the high-end, Harley Street clinic-style health check-up that can easily run into many thousands of pounds. ‘Neko is about helping consumers be more proactive about their health,’ Nilsonne stresses. The price point is modest, but most of all it’s the scope of the service and the strength of the data that makes it so valuable. As a result, 80 per cent of customers come back.

‘We’re a doctor-led model,’ Nilsonne continues. ‘Doctors will accompany you, asses you and then go through your data. An appointment is mostly talking and if there are any issues that need further discussion, this can also be done in-house.’ Most importantly, the barrage of data that Neko generates is, ultimately, all actionable, whether it’s lifestyle changes or, in the 1 per cent of cases to date that have revealed a more serious underlying condition, with follow-up care.

To achieve all this, Neko Health’s set-up is about ‘getting as much high-quality information as quickly and cheaply as possible.’ That’s not to say the set-up is low-rent; in fact, it’s the opposite. The scanning suites are equipped with a mix of proprietary and off-the-shelf technology. Blood tests, for example, are industry standard, the difference is that the phlebotomy lab is on site (with an impressive view of the market) and can turn results around in half an hour.

The environment is essential. As we saw in Marylebone, Neko Health manifests itself through soft pastels, an aesthetic that’s part spa, part spaceship, where light, texture and ambient noise all play a key role in calming, intriguing and enticing. The company’s architect, Franquibel Lima, formerly of Foster & Partners and WeWork, was tasked with turning this glassy office pavilion into a more clinical, private space. ‘The first challenge was to engage with the scale and transparency,’ Lima says, ‘what we offer is of course fundamentally private.’

Emphasising that this a journey, not just in terms of your health, but also as you travel from public realm to scanning room, visitors walk from reception past a vast ‘pivoted door’, an 8m-high, 100 sq m wall of 3D-printed recycled translucent material that’s illuminated from within. This creates the impression of a curtain being drawn back, not just grand but also intriguing. From the double-height, fully glazed lobby space, you peer through into a ‘safe space’, with a folded steel staircase leading to the upstairs scanning suites. This instantly shifts the scale to the domestic, with fabric sound-absorbing rooms, carpets and friendly but contemporary seating. The outside world is screened out by net curtains, and the overall effect is minimal but not cold. ‘If it’s all about your health, there shouldn’t be any other distractions,’ Lima says.

Stepping up for a scan

In the days before the new site opened, we took a trip to Marylebone to experience Neko Health first hand. The main difference here is that the scanning suite occupies a lower-ground level, so rather than ascend into a light-filled space, you’re descending into a pastel-hued basement. Along with qualified nurses, Neko has found that former GPs tend to have the wide range of experience that best suits their service. After a brief check-in and online identity validation – security is a big issue – you’re invited to step into a changing booth adjoining your assigned scanning suite. Undress and slip on the robe and slippers, clock your current weight and you’re good to go through for the scan.

First up is the body scan. In just seven seconds, the proprietary system with its nine cameras bathes you in warmth from 24 ultra-bright lights to capture a couple of thousand high-resolution photographs of every mark, blemish, mole and spot on your body. This is then followed by a conventional blood test, with the sample dispatched to the lab via pneumatic tube, an air puff test to check the pressure inside your eye as well as conventional grip strength test.

Then it’s onto the soft-padded bench of the main scan system. Blood pressure monitors are attached to both index fingers, arms and ankles and a special cardiovascular scanner that uses different wavelengths of laser light examines the movement of blood through your veins and arteries. The mildly squeamish might want to avoid the images on the screens and choose to focus on the soft, calming citrus colour used throughout, or the meticulous grid of the suspended ceiling. Neko Health’s own scan technology is mounted here, and the units are manipulated into place to take the various readings. After blood pressure has been thoroughly assessed, a final sensor moves down to do a radar scan of the blood flow in your chest.

After an introduction from the doctor and a quick check of your heart (together with a recording of your heartbeat), you get dressed and head into the debrief room with the doctor for a 20-minute consultation focusing on the results. Aside from a very slight initial frisson created by the facility’s resemblance to quasi-dystopic neo-medical sci-fi visions favoured by the likes of Coma, Logan’s Run, Gattaca, or even Severance, the experience is calm, straightforward and conducted with utter professionalism.

Data and communications are the most important takeaway, and the amount of time and energy that has gone into creating the ‘dashboard’, a slick display of your health metrics that the doctor talks you through after your appointment, reflects this. With all this information banked – including a frankly alarming visual record of those many surface blemishes – you’re now in an excellent position to monitor your health going forward. Think of it as an enhanced personal health consultation, with readily available stats (kept on your dashboard in the online Neko Health app) to track or show to other consultants. This alone is probably the biggest and best takeaway from your scan.

Like most people, engaging with any form of inquisitive healthcare involves a certain amount of trepidation, regardless of how crisply clinical and wondrously choreographed the experience turned out to be. Neko doesn’t prescribe medication and only makes referrals where they’re genuinely needed, and our doctor was adept at pointing out the good (and bad) bits and offering helpful advice. ‘Why can’t we have a healthcare system where the presentation is good?’ Nilsonne asks rhetorically and the answer is, of course, money.

Neko Health is priced well below the market rate, thanks to the company’s massive investment in design, technology and people. Even so, it’s not exactly mass market. Right now, there are no obvious competitors, but Nilsonne firmly believes that’ll change. ‘Over the next decade there’ll be a mega-trend in preventative healthcare,’ he says, ‘Right now, my biggest problem is building these fast enough.’

Neko Health scan, £299, NekoHealth.com