Spotify’s founder helped develop an AI-powered body health scanner

“After 4 years of intense analysis and product improvement, we’re formally launching Neko Well being right this moment,” the put up reads. “The corporate was based by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek with the imaginative and prescient to create a healthcare system that may assist individuals keep wholesome by means of preventive measures and early detection.”

In keeping with a translated model of Neko Well being’s web site, the Swedish firm’s non-invasive full-body scanner can detect and measure the expansion of birthmarks, rashes, and age spots. It additionally makes use of a separate scanner to select up on any abnormalities in coronary heart perform, blood stress, and pulse all through the physique.

Neko says the corporate’s 360-degree physique scanner comes outfitted with over 70 sensors that gather greater than “50 million information factors on pores and skin, coronary heart, vessels, respiration, microcirculation and extra.” This information is then analyzed by a “self-learning AI-powered system” that spells out the outcomes for medical doctors and sufferers. Purchasers get outcomes at their appointment, and may even view and observe their outcomes on an accompanying app.

“Our mission is to construct a proactive healthcare system, one that’s targeted on stopping illnesses,” Nilsonne writes in a put up on LinkedIn, citing the rising prices of healthcare in Sweden and the European Union. The complete-body scans, which Neko says solely take a couple of minutes, are at the moment open to the general public in Sweden and value 2,000 SEK (or round $190 USD). Right now of writing, the scans are at the moment offered out.

Ek’s foray into the healthcare trade isn’t precisely a shock. Rumors concerning the startup have been circulating since November, and Ek has lengthy hinted at getting concerned in healthcare. In 2013, a report from The Monetary Instances revealed that Ek “spends spare hours eager about the best way to repair a ‘screwed-up’ healthcare system.” “I’m not the inventor, however I could also be the individual that’s dumb sufficient to go towards the system and attempt to beat it by itself phrases,” he stated on the time.

It’s clearly too early to inform what sort of influence Neko Well being may have on the healthcare trade, but it surely sounds promising. Comparable know-how has emerged prior to now, with Fb and New York College teaming as much as make MRI scans sooner utilizing AI, and researchers growing AI know-how that scans your retina and predicts your danger of coronary heart illness. However Neko Well being employs this know-how on a bigger and extra accessible scale, and it’s thrilling to consider its potential.