When you descend the staircase to Neko Health’s first US location, on Lafayette Street in SoHo, you might wonder if you’ve time-traveled into the future.
That is, if you can get in.
Since opening its first stateside clinic, the Swedish company has accumulated a waitlist of more than 50,000 people. Neko first debuted in Stockholm in 2023.
At Neko, where a health scan costs $499, members begin by changing into a now Instagram-famous yellow robe and accompanying foam slides. By far the most futuristic part of the experience is the company’s skin scanner, during which members stand nude while cameras capture 6,000 images of their skin. The resulting map allows clinicians to document each visible mole, track changes from year to year, and identify any markings that warrant a closer look. Members, a word Neko uses intentionally, can also keep tabs on this information via the company’s app.
The entire appointment takes approximately an hour but manages to assess body composition, grip strength, cardiovascular health, and more than 50 blood biomarkers, among other measurements. Thanks to Neko’s on-site laboratory, blood results are ready within minutes. Once the testing is complete, a clinician discusses the findings with each member and helps arrange any necessary follow-up care.
Neko is part of a new class of consumer-health businesses attempting to make preventive diagnostics not only more accessible, but more desirable—and perhaps even cool.
Similarly, Prenuvo has turned whole-body MRI into a celebrity-endorsed status symbol. BeSound is expanding access to breast imaging outside the traditional referral process. All three companies spoke about wanting to give consumers greater control over their health by providing information that might otherwise be difficult to access. They are part of a much larger group: a rapidly growing number of companies, including Function Health, Ezra, and Biograph, are working to normalize proactive, consumer-directed health testing, from expansive blood panels to whole-body imaging.
Although their technologies and purposes differ, these companies all combine medical testing with the convenience, design, and service conventions of luxury wellness.
These destinations arrive after an earlier wave of high-design wellness and longevity concepts drew significant attention and raised north of $30 million each, but struggled to build sustainable businesses. Modern Age—which combined testing, treatments, and longevity-oriented services inside polished clinics—closed in 2024. The Well’s New York flagship has remained closed since a burst pipe flooded the space in December 2024, although the broader brand has continued to expand beyond the city.
But the companies driving this next phase might argue that their offerings are fundamentally different: The hospitality experience may entice consumers through the door, but proprietary or advanced diagnostic technology is the product.
Each of the three diagnostic providers has its own reason for believing its focus is the right one.
Neko has centered its approach on cardiometabolic health, which Dr. Sunita Mishra, the company’s Chief Medical Officer, described as the leading disease burden in the United States. Mishra joined Neko from Amazon after spending many years as a primary care physician. “I always had this feeling that I wasn't really getting people healthy. I was managing a lot of their illness, writing a lot of prescriptions, [but I didn’t feel like] I was moving the needle on getting people to be on a healthier trajectory,” she said.
She believes Neko’s presentation of the data may be helping members change their behavior. According to Mishra, returning members improved across all seven of the cardiometabolic biomarkers the company tracks, while members managing conditions such as diabetes or hypertension showed 2.5 times greater improvement. One-third returned reporting that they were exercising more.
“There’s something about the way that we’re sharing the information with people that is actually giving them actionable insights,” Mishra said. “People are like, ‘I actually have agency, and I can do something about improving my health.’”
The enthusiasm may also translate into repeat business: According to Mishra, 75% of members book and prepay for the following year’s scan before leaving.
Prenuvo, meanwhile, built its offering around whole-body MRI, which founder and CEO Andrew Lacy described as the “highest-yield modality” for assessing internal organs and soft tissue. The company spent its first seven years focused exclusively on imaging before adding blood testing to its offerings last year. Prenuvo pricing ranges from $1,199 to $4,999.
Lacy is a serial entrepreneur who founded the company after discovering the benefits of whole-body MRI on a personal level. “I found a radiologist that was doing an earlier version of these scans in Canada. I went and did one. It blew my mind. I learned more about my health in one hour than the health system had told me my entire life.” When, he said, he couldn’t shake the idea that he’d seen “the future of healthcare,” Prenuvo was born. The company started in Canada and now has more than 30 locations.
BeSound takes a narrower approach, using automated 3D ultrasound to make breast imaging available outside the traditional referral process.
“Breast cancer is what’s actually killing women, so if women only have time to do one thing a year, it should be BeSound,” founder and CEO Bailey Renger said. Renger also came to the idea for her company through personal experience, after a health scare of her own. “I just wasn't taken seriously,” she said, “I couldn't get the scans I wanted, and had to really fight and advocate for myself beyond what I thought was necessary.” Breast cancer is the second leading cancer to kill women in the US, second only to lung cancer, while heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the US.
BeSound is aimed in part at women under 40, who are generally not advised to undergo routine mammograms if they are at average risk, as well as women with dense breast tissue, which can make cancer more difficult to detect on a mammogram. Customers can book the company’s $349 scan without a referral. During the approximately 20-minute appointment, a sonographer uses FDA-approved automated 3D breast ultrasound to capture images that are subsequently interpreted by a board-certified physician, with results typically delivered within 24 to 48 hours.
The service is intended to supplement, not replace, mammography. Renger believes it fills a gap for women who want imaging but may encounter age restrictions, insurance hurdles, or difficulty obtaining a referral through the traditional system. Unlike a mammogram, the ultrasound does not use radiation or breast compression. BeSound delivers its reporting directly through its online portal and, like Neko, helps customers coordinate additional care if a scan identifies something that requires follow-up.
Together, the companies represent three different takes on preventive diagnostics: Neko emphasizes broad, repeatable health measurement; Prenuvo offers a deep look at the body’s internal organs and soft tissue; and BeSound concentrates on making one form of breast imaging easier to access. None of the three companies take insurance, though all three can be paid for with one’s FSA or HSA account. Lacy noted that Prenuvo has begun partnering with employers to cover scans for groups of employees.
Despite their different technologies, the companies all approach healthcare with the belief that medical testing does not need to look or feel like conventional healthcare.
At Neko, visitors are called members rather than patients, Mishra noted. At Prenuvo, Lacy said, visitors will not find any “white coats.” BeSound was designed to occupy the space between traditional “clinical and cold” medical offices and a “woo-woo spa,” Renger said.
“People generally arrive carrying a memory of every healthcare environment they’ve been in. The design either confirms that memory or replaces it,” Franquibel Lima, Lead Architect & Head of Creative at Neko Health told BeautyMatter. “We take our references from outside healthcare, from the best hotels and retail. Our ambition is to make understanding and acting on your health feel like something you actively choose to do.”
The robes are not the only place pale yellow is found. “We want people to feel optimistic the moment they walk into the Neko Health scan room. It’s a pale citrus yellow. It has warmth and energy, but it stays gentle, so an unfamiliar experience feels inviting,” Lima said, noting the importance of light in the scan rooms. “The color shifts across the different finishes in the room, and that softens the medical devices. The technology becomes easy to be around. People relax, and they get curious about their own health,” Lima said, adding that the yellow scan room is the one element to repeat regardless of where in the world one might visit a Neko clinic. Other design elements are inspired by the building and city that clinic is in.
At Prenuvo, guests have private dressing rooms to change and leave their belongings in during their scans, and during the scans, they can watch Netflix — a rarity during an MRI. After their scans, they can take from a wide selection of snacks and beverages.
Renger emphasized that BeSound deliberately avoided the pink palette commonly associated with women’s health. Instead, shades of blue and a wave motif run throughout the space, chosen to create a calming atmosphere. “We haven't cut any corners in terms of the furniture [or décor],” Renger said, noting that the company sourced its rugs from high-end design brand Nordic Knots.
For each company, design is more than a cosmetic flourish. They are betting that a calmer, more convenient, and more appealing experience can persuade consumers to seek testing before symptoms appear—and, ideally, return year after year.
While the three businesses are at significantly different stages, they have all raised capital.
Neko has raised more than $1 billion, including a $700 million Series C led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and co-led by O.G. Venture Partners. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, will.i.am, and Claudia Schiffer were among the notable individual investors participating in the round. Prenuvo has raised approximately $190 million, including a $120 million Series B co-led by Forerunner Ventures, Left Lane Capital, and existing investor Felicis; its notable individual backers include Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber. BeSound, the youngest of the three companies, raised a $6.8 million seed round in September 2025, co-led by Overwater Ventures, Kindred Ventures, and Muse Capital, with participation from investors including Oura CEO Tom Hale.
According to Grand View Research, the global preventive healthcare technologies and services market was valued at $382.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $790.6 billion by 2033, growing at a 9.6% CAGR. North America generated 40% of 2025 revenue, with rising rates of chronic and lifestyle-related diseases expected to fuel continued growth.
In spite of shared design cues, the three companies do not necessarily present the same clinical questions. Dr. Rekha Kumar, an endocrinologist and primary care physician at Weill Cornell, who is not affiliated with any of the companies, distinguished Neko from services offering more expansive forms of imaging.
Neko’s assessment largely resembles the preventive care a patient might receive during a thorough annual physical, she said. Measurements such as blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, and an electrocardiogram are well established, even if Neko delivers them in a more design-forward format.
“The content that they're giving you is not new,” Dr. Kumar said. “But they're packaging it and marketing it in a way that makes it accessible and easy.”
That packaging may have value in a healthcare system where primary-care appointments can be difficult to schedule and test results may arrive piecemeal. Neko has patients in and out in around an hour, and, answering one of Dr. Kumar’s would-be concerns, the company can also prescribe certain medications and arrange referrals when a result warrants follow-up.
Prenuvo and BeSound raise a different set of considerations. In the absence of broad screening guidelines for whole-body MRI in asymptomatic people, Dr. Kumar said the decision to undergo one should be based on an individual’s age, family history, and other risk factors. Testing people with a low likelihood of disease increases the possibility that a scan will uncover benign abnormalities, potentially prompting anxiety, further imaging, or unnecessary procedures.
“The choice to get it has to be based on an individual risk assessment at this stage,” she said. “We have to look at an individual and put all of the risk factors together.”
Given the chance to respond, Lacy said, “The potential for false positives, anxiety, and unnecessary follow-up is a legitimate consideration, and one we're continually working to address through better technology and clinical interpretation. But the risk of finding something that turns out to be benign has to be weighed against the risk of missing something that could meaningfully impact someone's health. We shouldn't confuse the possibility of imperfection with a reason for inaction.”
Renger noted that “Scanning everything isn’t the same as screening well. Breast cancer is one of the biggest cancer threats women face and the one they fear most, which is where focused attention belongs. A whole-body wellness MRI doesn't use the dedicated protocols required to screen for breast tissue. Broad scans often create anxiety over benign findings while completely bypassing a woman's primary concern. If breast cancer is what you want to catch early, you need imaging built specifically for it.”
While these services speak about accessibility, that claim has its limits. Although paying $499 for a comprehensive appointment may be worthwhile for someone facing long waits or high deductibles, that price still remains beyond the reach of many of the people most likely to lack consistent primary care.
Prenuvo has by far the most locations thus far, with clinics in major cities including New York, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Buffalo, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Miami, and many others, as well as one in London and several in Canada. Neko, of course, has just come stateside, but has six clinics in the UK, one in Sweden, and many planned for the US. BeSound currently has two locations in Los Angeles and one in New York City.
“Philosophically, it fills a gap,” Dr. Kumar said of the category. “But in terms of who's actually in that gap in the US, they can't afford this,” noting that it is often the “wealthy well” who seek such services.
This results in a contradiction: These companies are making preventive testing easier to access, but primarily for consumers who can afford to bypass the traditional healthcare system.
Still, Dr. Kumar did not dismiss the broader cultural shift they represent. “Anything that promotes an interest in preventative health or people seeking out preventative care is a win,” she said.