If it suddenly feels like everyone you know is obsessed with tracking health metrics – from resting BPM to blood sugar spikes – you’re not imagining it. Preventative healthcare has quietly been morphing into a Very Big Deal in the wellness world for some time. Why? The lingering NHS backlog (which Health Sec, Wes Streeting, has said he hopes to tackle in part by shifting the nation’s mindset to a ‘prevention over cure’ one), the rise of wearables (hello Oura ring, Apple Watch, Fitbit), and a generational shift in prioritising all things wellbeing over being a slave to the rave.
The latest innovation in this space? Neko Health: the Swedish preventative healthcare start-up co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek and Watty’s Hjalmar Nilsonne. Since launching its UK arm in early 2024, the clinics (of which there are now three in London and one in Manchester) have amassed waitlists in the tens of thousands, all thanks to its £299 full-body scan that promises to catch the early signs of numerous diseases, long before you’d usually end up in a GP’s office with any symptoms.
But what actually happens during a Neko scan? And is it worth the gigantic hype that surrounds it? I booked in for a gifted review appointment and spoke to Dr Sam Rodgers, Neko Health UK’s Medical Quality Lead, to understand what this brave new frontier of predictive healthcare is really about.
What is Neko Health?
Neko Health is a chain of private clinics offering full-body testing for £299. It describes its ethos as being about “finding disease before it happens”, and as Dr Rodgers puts it, the aim is for people to get a “really comprehensive check of their cardiovascular health, metabolic health and their skin health” – three areas where the UK sees high levels of chronic disease developing.
An appointment will see your heart health measured in 13 different ways, 13 blood tests carried out, a full skin exam and four other body variables (grip strength, eye pressure, BMI and thermal profiling) checked... all in under an hour. The results are then presented to you in an easy-to-digest consultation led by a qualified doctor.
The idea is that by scanning people annually, “you can really stay ahead of your health,” identifying risk factors “long before they evolve into diagnoses and disease”, Dr Rodgers explains. He contrasts it with the “traditional model of healthcare, which is waiting until someone’s got the diagnosis and then giving medication to reverse the damage that has already happened”.
The clinic environment is also deliberately different from a traditional medical setting; the one I popped into, the Spitalfields site close to Liverpool Street station, felt like more of a spa-spaceship hybrid. Dr Rodgers points out that traditional healthcare rarely considers “how the built environment, the colour, the language that we choose to use, impacts upon someone’s perception of healthcare” and I was surprised that it really made a difference, given I don’t mind clinical settings in the first place.
At Neko, people aren’t referred to as patients either – a term Rodgers views as “loaded” – instead, they are members to ensure an “even balance in the room”.
The speed of the appointment is another selling point. The entire scan, all tests and the doctor consultation are completed within an hour, something that understandably raises eyebrows. “People are like, how did you do that sort of magic trick?” Rodgers says, especially when they’re used to waiting days for blood tests. But from his decade of working in laboratory testing, he explains that delays in the NHS are mostly due to “information moving between systems,” not the actual science itself.
In contrast, Neko Health uses single-sample analysers that process results in around six minutes, and the team runs constant quality checks, with Dr Rodgers adding that doctors manually review every result and can arrange follow-up tests if needed, all of which is included in the original fee.
What does a Neko Health appointment involve?
Stepping into the clinic, you can expect calm music, warm lighting and clean lines (ideal if you’re one of the 31% of Gen Z who say hospitals “freak them out”). After checking in via QR code and removing any jewellery beyond basic earrings or a simple ring, you’re led from the sparse reception area into the main scanning suite and given slippers and a robe.
The first test feels a bit like stepping into an airport body scanner: you de-robe, stripping down to your underwear, and thousands of photos are taken in seconds as the lighting shifts (becoming super bright and warm) and the system gets to work with gathering detailed data on your skin, tissue and veins. You then move across the room to another device that analyses microvascular tissue, followed by an ECG.
Blood is drawn and immediately processed to assess cholesterol, haemoglobin and other metabolic markers. A doctor then carries out a manual skin check, using a magnifying glass to inspect any markings and moles that the scan has flagged. If anything looks suspicious, they’ll refer the images straight to an in-house dermatologist.
All of this information is then compiled into a virtual dashboard that you review with a doctor before you leave, in the room next door. It shows how your results compare with other Neko members of your age and sex, giving you a baseline for future scans too, and allows plenty of time to ask questions.
Around an hour after leaving, you receive a text with your full digital report, broken into sections (heart health, diabetes risk, skin, blood markers) with expandable explanations for every metric.
First-person review: How I found my Neko Health experience
For a process that packs in so much testing, it all felt remarkably calm and efficient. The design of the clinic helps, as does the chic spa-like bathrobe you’re given upon entry, and there’s a real sense that everything has been engineered to run like clockwork – but despite that, I didn’t feel like another faceless patient who was being rushed in and out of the door (which can sometimes be the case with an NHS appointment).
When I asked Dr Rodgers which areas of women’s health often get missed, he highlighted cardiovascular and bone health – two areas I was especially interested to learn more about, the former due to basically everyone on my dad’s side having had a heart attack before the age of 60 and a latter due to some ongoing joint pain I've been experiencing.
Dr Rodgers explained that young women are somewhat protected against heart disease by higher oestrogen levels, but “post menopause, that protection will start to fade” and our cardiovascular risk rises.
Bone health is another area often overlooked by women and where habits matter: resistance training, vitamin D and maintaining muscle mass can drastically reduce osteoporosis risk later in life.
Given my family history of heart attacks and strokes, it was a huge relief to see my Neko results come back strong: my heart age was calculated at 29, compared with my actual age of 33. A major win – and good motivation to keep playing tennis and doing the odd spin class when I can.
But there were some less reassuring findings, too. My haemoglobin levels were low, which may be due to my vegetarian diet or iron intake, and the doctor explained this could even relate to why my feet are often cold despite the rest of my body feeling fine. I also learned I might have some issues regulating blood sugar, as my levels were in the top 90% of Neko members. However, this is something I’ve been aware of since a previous pre-diabetes diagnosis a few years back (which I managed to reverse by ditching my daily Magnum Double Caramel Gold Billionaire habit that formed in lockdown...). Still, it was a good reminder as to the importance of diet, especially around refined carbs.
Neko also offered me a follow-up blood (included in the price) to check in on the results that were flagged as worth investigating. This, the clinic explained, would take place at a separate site in Soho, rather than Liverpool Street, and which truthfully I just haven’t gotten around to yet (so can’t comment on).
Is a Neko Health scan worth it?
At £299, Neko’s scan can’t be called cheap, but compared with traditional private health MOTs that often run into four figures, it’s a shedload more accessible – in the past, due to my extreme health anxiety, I’ve paid £299 for just a single scan to investigate an issue. You get immediate results, a level of visual clarity that most medical reports lack, and the reassurance that follow-up tests are included.
It’s not a bespoke deep dive into every aspect of your body (if you’re looking for detailed hormonal analysis, for example, you’ll need to seek out another service), but as a broad preventative snapshot and easy way to (hopefully) get peace of mind, it’s impressive. So, yep! I’d hardcore recommend Neko Health.
For me, the experience was motivating rather than worrying. I left feeling more informed about my body, clearer on what I need to keep an eye on, as well as being relieved to have such a comprehensive baseline. It might sound odd but as someone with health anxiety, that can be debilitating at times, this honestly felt like a fun day out – although if my results had flagged something concerning, that of course likely wouldn’t have been the case.
I’m about to pop myself back on the waiting list in the hopes I can make this an annual check-up… Only 100,000 ahead of me in the queue! See you there?
Learn more about Neko Health and join the waitlist here
Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Features Editor, who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year for her work tackling the issues most important to young women. She regularly covers breaking news, cultural trends, health, the royals and more, using her esteemed connections to access the best experts along the way. She's grilled everyone from high-profile politicians to A-list celebrities, and has sensitively interviewed hundreds of people about their real life stories. In addition to this, Jennifer is widely known for her own undercover investigations and campaign work, which includes successfully petitioning the government for change around topics like abortion rights and image-based sexual abuse. Jennifer is also a published author, documentary consultant (helping to create BBC’s Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?) and a patron for Y.E.S. (a youth services charity). Alongside Cosmopolitan, Jennifer has written for The Times, Women’s Health, ELLE and numerous other publications, appeared on podcasts, and spoken on (and hosted) panels for the Women of the World Festival, the University of Manchester and more. In her spare time, Jennifer is a big fan of lipstick, leopard print and over-ordering at dinner. Follow Jennifer on Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
