Neko Health's US body scan push raises the same question wearables face

That is the newest development in a health-tech category the dossier keeps circling: consumer devices and services that promise to catch problems early. The pitch is familiar. The evidence is thinner than the funding.

On the 30 September episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis spoke with Farooq Abbasi, founder and general partner of Preface Ventures and an investor in Neko Health, about how the startup compares with other consumer-health companies. According to TechCrunch, Neko raised $700 million to build a business around scanning your body. The same article notes that Midjourney is building its own body scanner and that Function Health has also raised significant capital for a preventative-health platform. TechCrunch frames the question directly in its headline: is the scan worth it?

Neko is not the only company asking that question, and it is not the only one asking it this week.

Wearables are already in the clinic

Separate research published on 30 September points to a more modest version of the same idea. Mount Sinai said its researchers used wearable AI to forecast prolonged sitting in women with chronic pelvic pain. Medical Xpress covered the same work the same day, and Nature published the underlying paper, described as "Robust forecasting of sedentary bouts in chronic pelvic pain disorders for on-device learning and real-time deployment." The study is not about scanning bodies for tumors or arterial plaque. It is about predicting when someone will sit still for too long, and doing it on the device rather than in the cloud.

That distinction matters for anyone comparing the two categories. Neko's pitch is a full-body scan, a service you buy and attend. The Mount Sinai work is a forecasting model that runs locally on hardware a patient may already own. One requires a new habit and a new building. The other requires a sensor and a trained model.

Neither is a diagnosis. The dossier does not say the Mount Sinai model replaces a clinician, and it does not say the Neko scan does either.

The funding is not the finding

Investor enthusiasm for preventative health has been building for a while. The dossier includes a headline from July 2026 saying digital health funding is booming, especially for wearables, though that item is context rather than a citable source here. What is citable is TechCrunch's account of Neko's $700 million raise and its description of a crowded field: Midjourney building a scanner, Function Health raising capital, and investors betting big on the category.

Abbasi, an investor in Neko, went on the record in that podcast. The discussion, per TechCrunch, covered what has to happen for body scanning to become part of the broader healthcare system. That is the open question. A scan that sits outside the system is a consumer product. A scan inside it needs reimbursement codes, clinical validation and a place in a doctor's workflow.

The dossier does not resolve that. TechCrunch does not say whether Neko has reimbursement, and it does not report clinical outcome data.

There is a version of this story that is just about money. There is another version about whether the technology changes what happens to a patient.

Meanwhile, the politics move

Health tech's regulatory and funding environment is shifting at the same time. STAT reported on 1 October that the upcoming midterm elections are setting the stage for unusually significant changes to key Senate committees that play an important role in health care. According to STAT, both the finance and health committees could undergo major changes, and at least five of the finance committee's 14 Republicans are set to leave. STAT's John Wilkerson wrote the piece, which sits behind a STAT+ paywall.

The same outlet published a newsletter on 30 September, STAT's AI Prognosis, describing what health tech leaders are talking about in Washington policy circles. The visible portion of that newsletter does not detail the conversations, but the framing is clear enough: AI in health is a policy subject now, not just a product category.

That matters for body scanning and for wearables alike. The Senate finance committee handles Medicare and Medicaid. The health committee handles the agencies that would evaluate a device or a service. Turnover on those panels changes who writes the rules.

STAT notes that if Democrats take control of the Senate, they would run the committees, though the GOP membership changes could still influence the panels' directions. The dossier does not include polling or a forecast.

A slower, older argument

For a wider view of where digital health is heading, the dossier offers a 24 September interview in Rest of World with Ruby Wang, a physician and consultant, about her upcoming book on China's biotech and AI medicine sector. Wang told Rest of World that in the UK and the US, tech is always an add-on to the health system, whereas in China the digital rails are already there and society treats them as normal. She said China's digital health is not directly exportable, and that the West would never accept an AI doctor avatar.

Wang also said China this year could account for as much as 60% of global drug out-licensing deals, and that Chinese companies are strongest in oncology but less mature in immunology and weak at commercializing. Rest of World notes that more clinical trials are conducted in China than in the US.

That is a different argument from the one Neko is making, but it shares a premise: the technology is arriving faster than the systems around it. Wang said medicines should not be subject to tariffs under WTO agreements, and that security-focused language has been normalized in a dangerous way.

What the scan does not tell you

Back to the consumer side. The dossier gives no accuracy figures for Neko's scans, no peer-reviewed validation, and no independent clinical trial. TechCrunch's own headline poses the worth-it question, and the podcast, per the article, discusses comparisons with other consumer-health startups rather than outcomes.

By contrast, the Mount Sinai and Nature items come with a named disorder, a named method and a publication venue. They are narrower. They are also checkable.

That contrast is the useful part for readers. A $700 million raise tells you investors see a market. It does not tell you the scan finds anything a doctor would have missed. A Nature paper on sedentary-bout forecasting tells you a model works on a defined task, not that it improves anyone's life.

The dossier supports both statements. It does not support more.

There is one more thread worth noting, because it keeps recurring in health tech coverage: ownership and access. Tom's Hardware reported on 30 September that Xbox's Disc to Digital feature had rolled out to all players, letting them get digital licenses for games tied to physical discs. The catch, per Microsoft, is that you need access to the qualifying disc to retain the license; if you lose, sell or give it away, the license may be limited or revoked. The article notes Sony plans to stop manufacturing physical media for new releases by January 2028, and that a Change.org petition against that decision passed 200,000 signatures a week after it was announced.

That is a gaming story, not a health story. But it is the same structure as a subscription health service: you pay for access, and access can be conditioned on something you do not fully control. The dossier does not draw that link, and neither should anyone reading it as evidence. It is simply the same week's news.

What the dossier does establish is a split. On one side, money and ambition: Neko's $700 million, Midjourney's scanner, Function Health's raise, and a podcast asking whether any of it is worth it. On the other, incremental research: a forecasting model for pelvic pain, published in Nature and covered by Mount Sinai and Medical Xpress on the same day.

The funding is louder. The research is answerable.