I’m half an hour into my appointment at Neko Health for a full body MOT and here is a list of things that have happened already: I’ve stood in my pants inside an extremely bright chamber and had a machine scan and assess the 653 markings on my body; my eye pressure has been tested along with the blood pressure on each of my arms and legs; my blood has been extracted and sent a mere moment later to a doctor for analysis via some vacuum suction pod in the ceiling; my eye pressure and grip strength have been taken; I’ve had an ECG scan while listening to the precise sound my heart makes while keeping me alive; and my large and tiny vessels have been mapped while I have marvelled at their intricacy on the screen.
The purpose of these tests? To see precisely where my body is at. In case you’re one of the 10,000 people on the waiting list for an appointment for the Neko Body Scan at the newly-opened London outpost, or are wondering if you should join it, here’s what all those tests are in name of: the skin scan checks moles, birthmarks, rashes, and age spots; the blood pressure is looking to detect arterial stiffness and irregular heartbeat; the eye pressure detects glaucoma; the grip strength is checking overall health and muscle strength; the blood test an overall look at what’s going on. This is both unusual and impressive because of how quickly it all happens, because it gives such a detailed snapshot of your overall health, and because the doctor is on hand to help you decide how to act on that information.
I posit to the nurse whizzing around my body applying and removing various contraptions with quite remarkable speed and accuracy that the doctor who is currently analysing and assimilating all this information in another room will know more about me after thirty minutes than my GP does after years in their care. “That’s sort of the point; in an hour, we can give you a really comprehensive overview of where you’re at along with a doctor’s understanding of what you should do with those insights,” she says.
Behind Neko are two Swedes, Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Eke, who co-founded Spotify back in 2006 and is now a billionaire as a result of its huge success. In 2017, Billboard named him the most powerful man in the music industry, and having tried the Neko scan, I wouldn’t be surprised if he achieves similar plaudits for his work in preventative health.
Neko launched in Stockholm in 2018, and it being hugely comprehensive is right at the core of the business model — well, that and it being affordable: at £299. For the hour-long session, including all the scans (which I am told collect millions of data points both inside and outside the body) along with the the half hour with the doctor to chew over the results, it easily knocks competitors out of the park.
While the Neko ethos of a scan that is “preventative”, and this being better than cure may not be a new concept, their delivery of it is about as novel as it gets. After my scans I find myself being whisked out of one pastel-hued room into a white one resembling the interior of an eggshell, where the doctor runs through my results. Given that my job regularly involves being acquainted with the machinations and complaints of my innards, I am not surprised by the readings – but I am impressed by their thoroughness; in half an hour, the tests have delivered the sort of information that usually involves far more time and often many more experts. I am particularly impressed by the information on my high cholesterol, which I have tested regularly on account of inherited factors, but have hitherto never had quite so many insights on.
For me, the Neko scan acted as a pat on the back along with a little kick up the backside to do more cardio for that cholesterol reading, but for others it has been rather more significant. Of the 2,707 people scanned during its first year of operation, 14.1 per cent required medical treatment, while 1 per cent received potentially life-saving treatments, , in an age range of 33 - 79 year olds. The latter was as a result of signs detected relating to severe conditions such as cardiovascular diseases or skin cancers, which they weren’t aware of prior to visiting. That’s pretty staggering, and really adds weight to the idea that these body MOTs, if you will, should only continue to become the norm. I could finish here by saying that I for one will be back, but actually I am far from alone, with 80 per cent of Neko’s members booking annually. So I’ll join them. And so should you — if you can nab a slot.
