Daniel Ek, the founder and CEO of Spotify, is venturing into a new startup called Neko Health that aims to revolutionize the healthcare industry. As reported by Sifted, Neko Health will provide advanced full-body scanning to aid doctors in disease detection and prevention.
The startup hopes to solve the primary care system’s inadequacies, which do not allow doctors to focus on preventative care due to limited resources and time. Ek tells Sifted that he believes that early detection and prevention of diseases are crucial to avoid human suffering and reduce high social costs. Neko Health’s technology and AI could usher in a new era in healthcare, according to Hjalmar Nilsonne, Ek’s co-founder, and Neko Health CEO.
The company’s new health clinic in Stockholm will provide non-invasive treatments that will take about 15 minutes, followed by a doctor’s consultation, for a patient fee of €150. The examinations will collect over 50 million data points about various aspects of the body.
Neko Health’s technology is AI-based, and the company expects its diagnostic ability to improve over time. The startup was founded in 2018 by Ek and Nilsonne, with over €30m invested in the company, mainly by Ek’s investment company Prima Materia.
The company has already raised an additional €4.5m in a funding round and is fully booked since its public launch. Neko Health aims to shift healthcare from being reactive to proactive, just like how we regularly inspect our cars, but we wait until our bodies fall apart before doing something about them.