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wThen I started making the biggest predictions Health and Wellness Trends For 2025, preventive health care came up again and again. The idea is that by becoming incredibly body literate and taking steps to understand the state of your health now, you can avoid illness later.
I have spoken with many doctors and health professionals who are passionate about educating the public about ways to prevent poor health and maintain a healthy body and mind. These experts believe that by making small changes and getting tested for health markers regularly, we can live longer and avoid relying on imperfect public health care solutions that may let us down.
Of course, there are some issues with this argument. The first is that many people rely on systems like the NHS because they cannot afford to have health markers and pre-disease testing privately. Secondly, unless you are curious biohacker or an expert in biology, health testing may be difficult to understand. Where do we start with personal and personalized testing if we don’t know what we should be testing for? After all, preventive health care is about getting tested when you’re healthy, not when you’re already sick.
A new type of health test
I’m a so-called “biohacker nerd”, so when I was invited neko To attempt a new full-body health scan, I knew which aspects of my health would be tested. However, Neko aims to remove almost all the guesswork from the preventive testing experience, no matter how much you know. So whether or not I entered the building with my current knowledge about preventive health, I still left with the same awareness as I was after the experience.
The test, described as a full health MOT, takes one hour and costs £300 – which sounds expensive for the average person. However, when you analyze the cost of everything Neco Scan provides – mole mapping alone is usually quite expensive – it seems more reasonable. This test provides millions of data points, otherwise the cost of testing you individually would be very high.
Maybe that’s why Neco has a waiting list of 10,000 people. This essentially replaces the need for multiple tests in countless appointments at different clinics charging different fees. Instead, everything happens all at once in a 60-minute appointment, with the test results followed by a doctor interpreting them.
scan experience
The basement lab where the testing is done is all very sci-fi. Everything is pristine and when I donned a pale yellow dressing gown and stepped inside a giant floodlight tube I felt like I was in a Stanley Kubrick film. I was then asked to take off my gown and stand naked in the tube while cameras took 2,000 photographs of my body from all angles, recording every mole, freckle, and vein.
Next, I was asked to lie down on a table and was hooked up to an ECG, vials of my blood were taken for analysis and my grip strength was tested. This is followed by an eye health checkup and an evaluation of my heart and lungs. Two nurses used lasers to scan my wrists and check the brachial index of my ankles, and after that, a doctor examined my entire skin.
After all the scanning was finished, I went into another room to discuss my results. Everything was presented to me in easy-to-understand diagrams and charts on a big screen – like Spotify for Health wrapped up. Given that Neko was created by Hjalmar Nilsson and Daniel Ek, who co-founded spotify In 2006, this is no accident. Within a single hour, the scan had mapped my entire body and the AI had crystallized the data sets, delivered them to the doctor for examination and then presented them in a slideshow that said, “This is your life”.
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My favorite part of the experience was learning that my heart age is actually five years younger than my actual age and that I am in excellent health. Over the past few years, I’ve been working hard to take better care of myself and address the symptoms of stress and inflammation, so learning this was instructive. However, a lot can change in a year, whether it’s due to habits and lifestyle, genetics or external factors, so the doctor suggested I book in for a second scan in a year’s time.
The idea behind the annual scan is that by collecting a data set every 365 days (or thereabouts), Neco’s team will be able to track and observe fluctuations in your health and advise you on what you need to keep an eye on and how to maintain your health levels. Perhaps your biological age may also be reversed.
Co-founder Nilsson explains that “70 percent of health care costs are associated with chronic diseases, which are largely preventable or significantly delayed by early intervention”.
He says, “It seems quite clear that the health care system that everyone really wants is a preventive system that creates health rather than one that dispenses medicine to people who are already sick. We have created a new class of medical device that can very cheaply and easily collect people’s medical information and track it over time.”
For a relatively fit and healthy person like me, the scan can only provide peace of mind and a way to track the maintenance of my health from year to year. For others, a Neco scan can identify problems that may require additional medical attention before they worsen. In the company’s first year, 14 percent of people who used the body scan required some form of medical attention and one percent received life-saving intervention as a result of the test.
Decision
The nerd in me loved the whole experience and knowing what I do about personalized testing, I’d say the scans really are excellent value for money, especially if you’re only getting one scan a year. If you’re already into Preventive Health and Longevity, you’ll know how expensive a blood test can be and how impossible it is to get a blood test from the NHS if you’re curious about your health status. NHS appointments are reserved for people who are sick and who really need them.
Neco’s founders want to prevent disease from occurring in the first place. It’s a simple idea, but it seems to have created a problem – the company has raised $260 million in funding to expand its offering.
However, it’s worth mentioning that scanning is a one-size-fits-all situation. Everyone has the same set of variables tested and although this can provide a great set of insights about how to adjust lifestyle and take better care of yourself, it is not a case of coming in and asking for what you think you may need. The exam is same for everyone.
Factors like hormone health are missing from the blood test portion of the scan and for someone like me, I would love to discuss those with the doctor along with checking for cholesterol and diabetes tendencies.
However, the slideshow was the best part. This made it easy to understand each variable, the doctor discussed my habits and lifestyle with me and showed me a health forecast for the next few years. Everyone would benefit from having individual aspects of their health looked at in this way and being given actionable advice and this is something that is missing from most health care appointments. My advice was simple enough: drink more water, lift more weights and keep doing what you’re doing, but my knowledge of my body at this point is unmatched.
Of course, the test is still £300 which is a big reach for some people. However, as I lay on the table with wires stuck to my chest I kept thinking about a quote from biohacking expert Tim Gray: “If you think wellness is expensive, try illness.”
Neco Scan is not a common service and it is certainly not cheap, but when you consider how much it costs compared to in-person testing appointments and what you get for your money, I actually think the price is quite good. Then, of course, there’s the value of your health for years to come. We talk about health being priceless and an asset that we have no control over, but with more companies like Neco Health popping up every day and our collective awareness of good health growing, perhaps we have more control than ever before. It’s a relaxing idea if you can get around to it waiting list,
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