Swedish preventive healthcare provider Neko Health has published its Year Three Data Story, a report drawing on real-world findings from more than 80,000 members across the UK and Sweden between 2025 and 2026, spanning a total of 92,002 scans.
The Context
Chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular conditions and type 2 diabetes account for 80–90% of all healthcare expenditure and are projected to cost the global economy $47 trillion by 2030, yet up to 80% of cardiovascular disease and 90% of type 2 diabetes are considered preventable. Neko positions its preventive, full-body health assessment as a way to close that gap by giving people earlier visibility into their own health so they can act before illness develops.
Health Improvements Among Returning Members
Among the 9,138 members with two or more Neko scans, all seven tracked cardiometabolic biomarkers — systolic and diastolic blood pressure, non-HDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, HbA1c, weight, and grip strength — improved between the first and second scan.
To contextualize these changes, Neko uses a clinically validated “heart age” metric based on QRISK3, the cardiovascular risk model widely used across the UK’s NHS. At a population level, members’ hearts aged about a quarter more slowly than the calendar: while a year passed between scans, heart age rose by roughly nine months on average.
Members with prior chronic conditions — 18% of returning members, or 1,654 people, who reported a prior diagnosis of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes — saw the largest improvements, averaging about 2.5 times the improvement of members with no known conditions. Importantly, improvements weren’t limited to this group: members with no prior diagnosis and no relevant medication still saw all seven biomarkers improve between scans.
Early Detection
Beneath these broader improving trends, the report highlights why early visibility matters most. In 2025, 4% of Swedish members aged 25 to 84 were identified with a significant condition requiring medical treatment, including non-melanoma skin cancers, chronic metabolic conditions, and cardiovascular disease. A further 2% were found to have early warning signs — such as precancerous skin changes, pre-diabetes, insulin resistance, or elevated blood pressure — that could be managed through lifestyle change and monitoring before becoming a formal diagnosis.
Around 1% of Swedish members aged 28 to 72 had a severe and potentially life-threatening condition detected through their Neko Scan despite being asymptomatic, including invasive melanoma, severe arrhythmias, significant valve disease, and aortic aneurysms. This rate has remained stable even as scan volumes more than tripled — 1.0% in 2023, 1.2% in 2024, and 1.0% in 2025 — suggesting a consistent underlying prevalence of serious but silent disease in an ostensibly healthy population.
Behavioral and Medication Changes
Members also reported meaningful behavioral shifts between scans. Among members who reported being smokers at their first scan, 26% said they had quit by their next scan, with quitters’ average heart age falling by 30.7 months, compared to a 9.7-month rise among those who kept smoking. A third of members reported exercising more by their second scan, and those who did lost more weight on average (0.77 kg) than those who didn’t (0.22 kg).
Notably, medication was not the main driver of the improvements observed. Among members with high blood pressure at their first scan who weren’t already being treated, only 18% started blood pressure medication between scans — yet those who didn’t start medication still lowered their systolic pressure by an average of 9.6 mmHg (6.5%), with 59% returning to a healthy range. Similarly, just 6% of members with raised non-HDL cholesterol started cholesterol medication, but those who didn’t still lowered their non-HDL cholesterol by 10% on average.
Detection Patterns by Age and Sex
The likelihood of an actionable finding rose steadily with age across the 2025 Swedish cohort, from around 1 in 100 scans among members under 30 to more than 1 in 5 scans among those aged 70 and over. Men had a higher overall rate of actionable findings than women (around 78 per 1,000 men scanned versus 60 per 1,000 women), a gap driven mainly by “significant” findings such as hypertension and high cholesterol. Severe, life-threatening findings occurred at broadly similar rates across both sexes.
Among severe findings, melanoma accounted for roughly two-thirds of cases, with most of the remainder involving cardiac and vascular conditions such as cardiomyopathy, aortic or arterial disease, valve disease, and arrhythmia.
About Neko Health
Neko Health is a health technology company offering a preventive, full-body health assessment known as the Neko Health Scan. Founded by Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, the company opened its first clinic in Stockholm in 2023 and now operates clinics in Sweden and the UK, with US expansion underway. Neko designs much of its own scanning hardware, software, and clinical protocols in-house.
The 60-minute, radiation-free scan combines external assessment (2D cameras, thermal imaging, and depth sensors), internal measurements (blood pressure, ECG, cardiac function, and arterial assessments), a clinically reviewed blood draw, additional biometric measurements including grip strength and intraocular pressure, and advanced body composition assessment. Every scan ends with a face-to-face consultation with a clinician. Neko positions the scan as complementary to, rather than a replacement for, primary or specialist care.
