Once before, an idea by Daniel Ek had the clout to turn an entire industry upside down. Now the Spotify founder is trying again. After four years of research and development, his health-tech startup Neko Health is launched. It wants to use AI to detect diseases early.
Founder Daniel Ek revolutionized the music industry with the streaming service Spotify. The 39-year-old Swede has now founded another company. His latest coup aims to shake up an industry even bigger than the music industry: healthcare. The health-tech startup Neko Health wants to use artificial intelligence and innovative whole-body scans to help doctors detect diseases at an early stage or prevent them altogether. After four years of research and development, the company is now officially starting. The ambitious goal: change the ailing European healthcare system.
"Early detection and prevention of serious diseases would mean that we can avoid both the human suffering and the high social costs that serious diseases bring. With our technology and artificial intelligence, this future is now possible. It could be the foundation for a whole new era in healthcare," quotes the industry portal "Sifted" Hjalmar Nilsonne, co-founder of Ek and CEO of Neko Health.
The founders denounce the current healthcare system for not giving doctors the time and resources that preventive medicine actually needs. Given the many challenges facing healthcare, Ek and Nilsonne are convinced that early detection and preventive medicine must be given priority.
"Hjalmar and I founded Neko out of the realization that large parts of today's healthcare system were developed over 50 years ago. At the same time, healthcare has a long history of unsustainable cost trends and a severely strained medical profession. If we are to reverse this trend, healthcare must I'm convinced that we're no longer reactive, but proactive. Isn't it strange that we've been inspecting our cars every year since 1965 - but we wait for our bodies to fall apart before we do anything about it?", industry portal Ek quoted from a statement .
According to "Sifted", Neko Health has set up a new health clinic in Stockholm where the non-invasive treatments will be carried out. They should only last about 15 minutes. This is followed by a medical consultation. For a patient fee of 150 euros, these examinations collect over 50 million data points about the skin, heart, vessels, respiration, inflammation and more. Neko's technology is based on artificial intelligence. The founders therefore assume that the company's ability to diagnose will improve over time.
