I recently visited Neko Health’s London clinics 3 times. Why three? A tour, a body scan and a follow up. I’d been on the waiting list for a scan for months, so when its official opening was getting closer and a public tour was announced I grabbed a ticket to have a look around. Then shortly after I managed to book a scan, but thought I’d go for the tour anyway, as it was good opportunity to take some photos, and so that on the day of the scan I could just focus on the experience. So, what was it like?

The Clinic

First impressions were “wow!” The foyer at the Spitalfields clinic is the sort of reception area sci-fi movies portray of eternal youth clinics, and the experience continues throughout the visit with minimalist decoration and mood lighting. And having since watched a video by Neko’s architect which explains how the openness shifts to privacy in the transition zone, I can see that every detail was considered. Though, the architect had an open book for the building near Spitalfields market; the entrance to the Marylebone clinic is more like the staff entrance to an office building, but once down the stairs to the reception, it’s the same clinical-but-not-hospital look.

 Foyer at Neko’s Spitalfields clinic

And just to clarify, Neko Health have two clinics in London, one In the east, one In the west, so it should be easy for most people in the south-east of England to visit. Hopefully they’ll consider opening others in the north and west of the UK in future.

The reception staff were all very friendly and professional, and checked me in using a QR code (so keep your phone handy). There are toilets there for the last-minute nervous wee 😊

Reception area at Neko’s Marylebone clinic

In reception is where you swap your shoes for slippers – not comfy hang-around-the-house ones, but angular (maybe 3D printed?) foam clogs. They come in different sizes and fitted OK.

Neko’s idea of slippers!

Physical biomarkers

You’re then assigned an operator who looks after you and performs the scans before passing you over to a doctor at the end.

I was taken through to a changing room where I removed everything except my underwear and put on a light gown. In the changing room there was a Withings scale on which to weigh myself. This process did stick out in the visit, given how hi-tech everything else is, as I had to self-report my weight to the operator after leaving the changing room. Not only does this introduce the risk of errors, it also means other information (such as body fat percentage) isn’t collected. I realise Neko has to set a line somewhere as to what is included, but this could be an easy win in future.

After the skin scan (see below), you are guided through a grip test using a dynamometer, which looked pretty similar to the one I use at home. The grip test is a surprisingly useful way to measure biological age as it reflects someone’s overall physical strength – unless you just focus on your wrists to beat the system! Most procedures I’ve seen for measuring grip strength use 3 readings per hand, but it was only one each for me. Actually, one was repeated because it was so much below, the first time, the other hand, so perhaps they make a judgement on the day as to whether multiple readings are needed.

Before the cardiovascular scan, the operator also measures your eye pressure with a handheld device that you look into. Although it uses the same units as blood pressure, they’re not directly related; eye pressure (also known as intraocular pressure, IOP) is a measurement of the fluid pressure inside the eye. High eye pressure, which can cause glaucoma, is generally caused by fluid drainage failure. And as ocular hypertension doesn’t usually cause symptoms it seems sensible to include it in a regular physical checkup.

Skin scan

Now on to the interesting stuff. The pod which examines your skin for moles and blemishes is a walk-in circle, with the semi-circular door sliding around to close it once you are in. Well, it’s fully closed after the operator has put her hand through the gap to take your gown, all very discrete.

I faced the wall, which has lots (9 or 12, I think) of high-definition cameras installed on it, and stretched my hands out to the sides. There are recorded instructions which apparently I didn’t listen to closely. It warns you that the lights are bright and that you may want to close your eyes. I didn't hear that bit, and yes, they’re bright! I definitely recommend closing your eyes.

Then you turn around 180 degrees and do the same while your back is photographed. All over in less than a minute. 

Then the floating hand reappears through the opening with my gown to put back on 😊

Body scanning pod

Cardiovascular checkup

Once scanned externally, it’s then time to scan you internally, or at least your cardiovascular system. After the other physical checks (grip strength and eye pressure, see above) it’s time to lie down on the couch. As well as the computer screen and lasers in the ceiling (another sign of how the whole clinic has been designed from scratch for this one purpose) there’s also a lot of gadgets applied to my body. There are four blood pressure cuffs to start with (wrists and ankles), an SpO2 (blood oxygen) detector on a finger and other sensors on wrists and toes – the operator said it was for oxygenation too but not sure what they were exactly. Then there are all the ECG leads. You definitely feel plugged into the matrix!

Body scan couch

The operator was suitably busy attaching everything ready for the scan, so I didn’t want to interrupt her with lots of questions, and I also wasn't sure whether me speaking would affect the readings. Here’s quite a strange suggestion – a mirror on the ceiling so that you can see what is going on. Lying down facing the ceiling I could feel so much activity around me, it would be nice to at least see what is happening. At one point I’m sure my forearm was measured with a tape measure, or maybe that was my imagination, no idea what for! Longer term this could be a good use case for an AI – so that you can query what's going on or ask what things are in the room or why it works in certain ways, and it happily educates you while the operator is left in peace to do their job. During the laser tests there was a recorded voice providing some information, so that was a good start.

The first laser measurement is of the wrist vasculature. You can see the light patterns being projected onto your wrist – it could all be for show (I’m being sarcastic, I’m sure it’s not!) but all looks clever, and takes about 1 minute to do the full scan. Apparently, its measuring the microcirculation – looking at the smallest blood vessels in the body, to make sure that even if the heart is pumping well, the oxygenated blood is indeed getting to the cells it needs to reach.

Hjalmar Nilsonne (founder) demonstrating the wrist vasculature laser

Next is the laser in the ceiling, but the laser beam isn’t in the visible spectrum so no disco display as it scanned. Shame, as my understanding is that it measures the aortic pulse passing through the suprasternal notch (top of chest plate) – so you could pretend to be a super spy as the red laser approaches your throat… “No Mr Bond, I expect you to die, but not of heart failure as we should pick that up in time for clinical treatment”! Probably wouldn’t have made such a menacing Goldfinger 😊

By the time the cardiovascular scan is complete, the AI has done its job analysing the skin photos. It selects the 5 top risk blemishes, and the human doctor gives these a manual check along with any others he/she thinks needs a second opinion. Then, the same doctor, takes you through to the debrief room.

Doctor review

The debrief room is again minimalist and designed to put you at ease, but you know that you’re still in a hi-tech world as the large computer screen is was displaying a hologram-like representation of you. It’s not high resolution, more like a radar image, but it was definitely possible to recognise myself, especially as the image rotated.

Digital representation of me

What’s particularly impressive is that the blood test results are already available. A sample of my blood was taken on the couch and sent to the onsite lab via a pneumatic tube system, so available in less than half an hour. So much better than waiting for results by email later, and can be taken into account in the doctor’s assessment.

The doctor then walked me through the results (physical, skin, heart and blood) – which I’m pleased to say put me in the average to optimum range for most biomarkers. Although I got more time with the doctor than expected, there’s a lot to go through so it’s still a bit of a whistle stop tour, which was OK for me with good readings (and basic knowledge of the tests) but it might be a squeeze for more complex cases. Saying that, there was time to ask questions and delve deeper where required – for me that included learning that hs-CRP can go up after exercise, affecting test results, as the measurement can't differentiate between good and bad inflammation – something I’ll remember for my next annual blood test.

One thing that did come up was a potential conduction abnormality in my heart called axis deviation, so I was booked in for a free follow up review with a 12 lead ECG and echocardiogram. I booked that in for the following week at the same clinic, and fortunately got the all clear.

Report

My report arrived by email 15 minutes later, accessible on my phone or desktop.

As well as giving the results, there is also supporting information on normal (and also, optimal) ranges, and a couple of the biomarkers are also benchmarked against similarly aged Neko members. In addition, the report contains plenty of general advice, for example, using sun protection factor.

What I did notice is that not everything that is measured is included in the report, for example, the aortic ejection time (measured by the ceiling laser) is not given as a value. These measurements are taken into account in the overall heart health assessment, so any problems would be picked up by the doctor, but it’s not currently displayed to members. It’s all still quite new so this could change.

Data export

The next thing I tried to do export the results, as I like to have all of my information stored in my health spreadsheet. I assume that Neko securely holds all of my measurements, and they are accessible to the doctor at any follow up visits, but it’s good to have a local copy, just in case.

I needed help to find this functionality as the navigation button to export data is hidden once an appointment is selected. This is because all your data (not just for a single visit) is exported at the same time.

Close the report view (click X) to access the navigation icon (lines of dots)

Under ‘GDPR export’ you can request an export of all the information Neko holds on you, including the scan results. It says it can take a few hours, and in fact, mine took 3 days for the file to be generated – a total of 2.5 GB of data.

TIP: don’t try to use the built-in Windows file explorer “Extract all” function as it doesn’t prompt for the decryption key and fails. I used 7ZIP and that worked as expected.

The export isn’t a nicely formatted patient friendly report, but the raw data. It’s generally JSON encoded (including individual ECG channels) but there are also plenty of image files to browse through too. You can delve into the skin photos or, just for fun, examine the source microcirculation images.

3 of the 1,600 microcirculation images

Conclusion

All in all, I’m really impressed with how much is squeezed into the body scan, both from a time and cost perspective. To keep that scan under £300, which is affordable to most people with a gym membership (my normal rule) I thought there might be a bit of a production line feel to it, but that wasn’t the case.

Given that heart disease is the UK’s biggest killer (1 in 4 people die from cardiovascular disease) the focus on the heart makes sense. So that, along with the full body skin check and a basic blood test, it’s a great annual MOT for the body. The grip test and eye pressure check are just nice freebies.

Cost wise it’s hard to do a like-for-like comparison as no one else is offering a similar service. Some providers such as Randox Health and Bluecrest provide basic health checks, which although they provide more detailed blood tests (including a full range of apolipoproteins) they don’t look at the skin at all, and their cardiovascular checks are limited to blood pressure and SpO2.

If trying to put the package together yourself, then the blood test is probably about £80 on its own and £50 for an ECG. The Mole Clinic offers a whole-body nurse review for £195 – but charge an additional £40 per mole on top for a more detailed report – which for the top 5 picked out at Neko (though the doctor definitely checked more) would suddenly be £395. But even the nurse-only skin check with a blood test and ECG would already be over the £299 and that’s without the detailed heart check. And, of course, it’s a lot less convenient having to attend multiple appointments. Also, having a free follow up ECG and echocardiogram (based on clinical need) makes it an absolute bargain.

I’m already booked in for another scan next year as it’s never too early to discover when the body is going wrong, giving me more time to do something about it. An approach the great NHS just can’t offer at the moment.

To find out more about Neko and to book a scan, visit their website: https://www.nekohealth.com/

Blog written by Adrian Cull.