Inside clinic which uses HD cameras, radar and lasers during controversial high-tech MOTs
A new high-tech screening clinic co-founded by the boss of Spotify hopes to revolutionise healthcare by picking up signs of disease long before there are any symptoms.
Neko Health uses high resolution cameras, lasers and radar to capture millions of data points around the body, checking for problems that could become serious and even life-threatening in future.
It’s the latest in a wave of companies offering controversial high-tech MOTs. Some doctors warn they may increase health inequities and add to NHS workload by referring people with potentially insignificant findings.
Daniel Ek – the chief executive of the music streaming service – and his partner Hjalmar Nilsonne want to engage with the debate.
In one of the clinic’s softly-lit scanning rooms, Hjalmar tells me that healthcare has traditionally been about treating symptoms – “reactive”, as he calls it.
Co-founder Hjalmar Nilsonne says people need to be given long-term health not medicine
“We have to find a way to become more proactive, more preventative, to help people stay healthy longer,” he says.
“Instead of giving them medicine, give them long-term health.”
Neko Health’s first clinic outside its hometown of Stockholm, Sweden, is a world away from the busy London shopping street that it lies beneath.
A total of nine cameras take more than 2,000 images of your skin
It looks like something straight out of sci-fi.
In the centre of the room is a booth not unlike the teleporters in Star Trek.
Step inside and nine cameras – HD, 3D and thermal – take more than 2,000 images to build a high-resolution map of every mole, freckle and blemish on your skin.
If you return for annual checks it allows the clinic to track changes in size, pigmentation and other warning signs of skin cancer.
Next to the booth there’s more tech that could easily have been wielded by Star Trek’s Dr McCoy on his starship crewmates.
Lasers are able to spot early signs of cardiovascular disease
To spot early signs of cardiovascular disease lasers analyse the stiffness of arterial walls, shimmering patterns of green light check blood circulation and blood pressure cuffs take simultaneous readings on all four limbs.
There’s a blood sample taken too to measure cholesterol, blood glucose, biomarkers of inflammation and lots more.
In less than an hour millions of data points are collected and analysed, with a doctor explaining the findings.
For the record I, like 79% of those scanned in the Stockholm clinic’s first year, got a clean bill of health.
But 14% of the clients in Sweden needed medical treatment for something picked up in the health check. And 1% had potentially life-saving care for serious problems they were previously unaware of.
In less than an hour millions of data points are collected and analysed
More than three-quarters of customers have booked again for a year’s time. Most, it seems, consider the checks worth the £300 cost.
It’s a growing market.
You can pay several thousands to companies offering whole-body MRI scans to see what’s going on below the skin.
Kim Kardashian gave a celebrity buzz to a company called Prenuvo by referring to its scanner as a “life-saving machine” in an Instagram post.
The shift towards disease prevention has big champions.
Professor Sir John Bell, now of the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford, was instrumental in creating the UK Biobank, Genomics England, and more recently the Our Future Health study – all initiatives to dive deep into patient data to spot signs of disease.
Professor Sir John Bell says preventative health checks will be the norm in the next 10 years
He says preventative health checks will be the norm in the next 10 years.
Not the rudimentary lifestyle questionnaires the NHS offers to mid-life patients now. There’ll be far more tech – and AI – running the rule over our inner health.
But it’s a mindshift for the NHS.
“People don’t want to talk to you about cardiac problems until you have chest pain, and then they’re quite keen to talk to you,” Professor Bell says.
“But the trouble is, they picked it up too late because for the last 35 or 40 years it’s been accumulating in your cardiac vessels. You’ve been asymptomatic, so nobody’s done anything about it.
“Understanding which diseases you have and capturing them fast at their earliest stage will mean you have a much longer, healthy life expectancy.”
But other doctors are more cautious.
Dr Saira Ghafur, a respiratory physician at Imperial College London, is concerned that the people who are most likely to have underlying health problems are the least likely to be able to afford private check-ups. It could make existing health inequalities even worse, she fears.
Dr Saira Ghafur fears health MOTs could worsen inequalities
There’s also the risk private health checks will add to NHS waiting lists, Dr Ghafur tells me. They’ll pick up lots of issues that need NHS follow-up but ultimately turn out to be nothing to worry about.
And then there’s the lack of evidence that the issues picked up actually matter.
“We have to make sure that we’re doing prevention right,” she says. “For that, we need a very strong evidence base.
“But we are going to have to wait many years to be able to show that doing this screening, collecting these data points, has actually resulted in better (health) outcomes.”
That hasn’t deterred people from signing up to Neko Health. Its Stockholm clinic has a waiting list of 20,000 and it expects strong demand for checks at its London branch.
Hjalmar Nilsonne comes from a family of doctors and says he understands the concerns of an overworked medical profession.
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The company does follow-up checks itself to be sure the problems picked up on scan are significant before telling people to seek NHS treatment.
He wants the health service to see preventative health checks as a help, not a hindrance.
“70% of the healthcare costs in society come from chronic disease,” he says. “Most chronic disease can be prevented or greatly delayed if you find it early enough.
“So we’re really focused on finding the early signs that things are going in the wrong direction and helping you find the ways to counteract that and avoid it in the first place.”
UK
Starmer to explore Albania migration deal as he meets Italian PM after appointing new border security chief
Italy’s migration deal with Albania will be on the agenda as the prime minister meets his counterpart in Rome on Monday, after appointing a former police chief to tackle people smuggling.
Sir Keir Starmer has signalled he is “interested” in the plan under which Tirana will accept asylum seekers on Italy‘s behalf while their claims are processed.
While he admitted it was “early days” in the rollout of the policy, he indicated he was open to pursuing a similar scheme for Britain.
Talking before the trip, the prime minister said his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni “has of course got some strong ideas and I hope to discuss those with her”.
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At least 45 people have died in Channel crossings so far this year
Asked whether he would consider pursuing an agreement similar to the one Italy has struck with Albania, Sir Keir replied: “Let’s see. It’s in early days, I’m interested in how that works, I think everybody else is.
“It’s very, very early days.”
On the visit, the prime minister will be joined by the UK’s new Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt.
Martin Hewitt in 2021. Pic: PA
Mr Hewitt has been appointed to lead the government’s new Border Security Command – a key election pledge made by Sir Keir to tackle illegal immigration to the UK, replacing the previous Tory government’s Rwanda scheme.
The pair will tour the National Coordination Centre for Migration to see how Italy responds to irregular migration.
Mr Hewitt, the former National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) chair, will lead a new international effort to destroy criminal smuggling gangs, the government says.
He stepped down as chair of the NPCC in April 2023 after a four-year term. During the pandemic, he delivered several addresses to the nation from Downing Street as the “voice of policing”.
Sir Keir said of the appointment: “No more gimmicks. This government will tackle the smuggling gangs who trade the lives of men, women and children across borders.
“Martin Hewitt’s unique expertise will lead a new era of international enforcement to dismantle these networks, protect our shores and bring order to the asylum system.”
Mr Hewitt said: “For too long, the criminal gangs who smuggle people through Europe have abused our borders in the name of profit, and they are responsible for the deaths of scores of vulnerable, innocent people.
“We will dismantle them, bring them to justice and prevent them from using exploitation and deceit to fill their pockets.”
At least 45 people have died in Channel crossings so far this year.
More than 21,000 people crossed the English Channel in small boats between January and September this year, government figures show.
A record number of GP appointments will have four-week waits this year, new data shows.
There were 10.3 million waits of four weeks or more for a GP appointment in the seven months to July, analysis of NHS data by the Liberal Democrats has found.
That is 1.7 million higher than the same period last year, when 8.6 million appointments had four-week waits.
If this year’s number continues in the same vein, as is expected, it will beat last year’s record of 17.6 million four-week waits.
In some areas, NHS data shows almost one in 10 GP appointments have seen four-week or more waits so far this year.
Gloucestershire has the highest proportion of four-week waits in the country, with 10.1% of GP appointments in that category.
Derby, Derbyshire and Glossop, Dorset, and Chorley and South Ribble come next, with all having 9% or more of patients waiting longer than four weeks for a GP appointment.
That is nearly double the national average of 5%.
The Lib Dems are demanding the government increase funding for the NHS, including GP services, when the chancellor announces her autumn budget on 30 October.
But Sir Keir Starmer earlier this week said the NHS would not get any more funding without reforming as he laid out a 10-year plan to fix the health service.
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Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey told Sky News the NHS cannot “withstand that approach”.
“It needs the investment up front as well as reform,” he said.
He said the Conservatives “reneged” on reforming social care and said “Labour doesn’t seem to be grasping” it.
The Lib Dems want to give everyone the legal right to a GP appointment within a week, or 24 hours if in urgent need.
An extra 8,000 GPs would be needed to do that.
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Lord Winston discusses how he thinks the government could fund the NHS
Sir Ed said: “Everyone should be able to see a doctor when they need one, but the Conservative Party broke the NHS so badly that millions of people are waiting weeks for an appointment.
“That’s why Liberal Democrats are campaigning for everyone to have the right to see a GP within seven days, or 24 hours if it’s urgent, and we are urging the government to boost GP numbers to make it happen.
“Fixing the GP crisis is critical to saving our NHS. If people can get seen quicker, fewer will end up in hospital in the first place. That’s better for them, better for the NHS and better for taxpayers.”
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Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper is expected to discuss the NHS in her keynote speech to the party’s conference on Monday.
She will say: “You don’t have freedom if you’re on a waiting list so long that your world shrinks and you’re stuck hobbling at home between a couple of rooms.
“Decent health and care services are the bedrock of a liberal society.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “The NHS is broken. These findings show how much general practice has been neglected. This government will fix this by shifting the focus of healthcare out of the hospital and into the community.
“We have committed to hiring an extra 1,000 GPs into the NHS by the end of this year. In addition, we have provided a further £311m towards GP contract funding in 24/25 – an uplift of 7.4%. We will also ensure that GPs have the resources they need to offer patients the highest quality care.”
UK
Manchester City face long-awaited hearing over alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules
The Premier League’s long-awaited hearing into Manchester City’s alleged breaches of financial rules will begin later.
City, the reigning Premier League champions, face 115 charges under Premier League rules, which they allegedly breached by failing to provide accurate financial information over a nine-year period starting in 2009 until 2018.
During that period the club won the Premier League three times.
The charges relate to financial information regarding revenue, details of manager and player remuneration, UEFA regulations, profitability and sustainability, and cooperation with Premier League investigations.
The club has denied all the charges, which it will face at an independent hearing at an undisclosed location.
Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium. Pic: PA
The trial could last up to two months and a verdict is expected in early 2025.
City could face a deduction in points if found guilty – or even the threat of expulsion from the Premier League.
Last season Everton were docked points twice and Nottingham Forest were also docked for breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules.
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What have City been accused of?
City are alleged to have breached rules requiring the provision of accurate financial information.
Among a second set of charges is that they did not fully disclose the financial remunerations made to one of their managers related to seasons 2009-10 to 2012-13 inclusive.
The club’s manager between December 2009 and May 2013 was Roberto Mancini.
The third section deals with alleged breaches of Premier League rules requiring clubs to comply with UEFA Financial Fair Play regulations, between 2013-14 and 2017-18.
The fourth set of alleged breaches relates to the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules in seasons 2015-16 to 2017-18 inclusive.
Finally, the club are also alleged to have breached league rules requiring member clubs to cooperate with and assist the Premier League with its investigations, from December 2018 to February 2023.
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