Our recent Neko Health visit prompted us to re-visit our consumer health thesis. This week, we published the first part of a three part series on consumer health diagnostics 👇
1️⃣ Early diagnosis enables better health outcomes. Neko Health is a great example, bringing scalable preventative screenings to consumers (to those who can pay £299 - more on that further down!). There are many more companies in this consumer diagnostic category like Daye and Oxford Cancer Analytics. We will be exploring these in the coming weeks 🏥💡
2️⃣ The Neko experience prides itself on cardiovascular and skin health. But there are many more tests beyond this, including: eye pressure, grip strength, and tissue composition. There is value in this 'point-in-time' snapshot, but the true unlock is in the trend data which Neko will observe if people rebook scans on a yearly basis. Early Neko data suggests 76% users rebook... 🫀 📊
3️⃣ The data moat is going to be huge. Neko is essentially building the primary care infrastructure of the future. Beyond the data and diagnostics, the consumer experience is very high quality (I know that building design is besides the point, but it also kind of isn't... they've transformed preventative health into something to be enjoyed. There's bias here as I know I feel particularly accountable when I see my health data) 📈 🤖
4️⃣ There are two BIG pushbacks to this approach. (1) Encouraging mass-screening can cause health anxiety for low-level problems and can therefore cause more harm than good at the aggregate level. We cover this in the note but believe that this misses the core point of preventative health. To us, the good outweighs the harms. (2) The £299 price point is inaccessible for the majority of people. Health equity has always been important to us and we believe there is a long way to go before many consumer diagnostics become truly accessible and equitable 😟 💰
5️⃣ At Eka, we back health companies which enable a move from a reactive treatment-led healthcare model to a more proactive and accessible system. We're lucky to have backed some incredible companies in Consumer Health including Oxford Cancer Analytics, Flok Health, Isla Health, and others 💼💊
As always, feel free to reach out if you're building here and keen to chat ☕️
Camilla Dolan Jon Coker Hamish Law Alicia Walker Anna Westall
P.S. article is in the comments 📝
#HealthcareInnovation #ConsumerHealth #EarlyDiagnosis #HealthTech #Investment #FutureOfHealthcare
