Prenuvo CEO on the role of whole body MRI tech and how AI is reducing costs and improving efficiency in diagnostics.
Market leader Prenuvo has set a new standard in preventative healthcare, completing over 100,000 whole-body MRI scans – a major milestone for both the company and the broader imaging field. Its advanced technology enables full-body MRI scans in under an hour, capturing over one billion data points and generating significantly more clinical-grade images than conventional MRI systems. In 2024, Prenuvo raised $120 million in Series B funding to further its mission of transforming early disease detection. The company also secured FDA clearance for its Prenuvo Body Composition report, an AI-driven tool that provides a detailed analysis of visceral fat, liver fat, muscle volume and key organ measurements – insights that could be crucial for metabolic and cardiovascular health.
Beyond imaging, Prenuvo is expanding its preventative health capabilities with a new brain health scan, designed to detect early signs of cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases. The company has also developed a customized blood biomarker assessment, offering a functional and conventional panel that evaluates metabolic, cardiovascular, hormonal and immune health. This integration of imaging and blood analysis enhances early detection, giving patients a comprehensive view of their overall health.
Longevity.Technology: As Prenuvo continues to innovate, it is redefining how we approach disease prevention – offering a proactive alternative to traditional reactive healthcare. However, as we know from our longevity clinics survey, only just over 30% of clinics offer whole body scanning as part of their imaging and diagnostics, something that demonstrates the emerging stratification in the market between diagnostics and interventions. Hot on the heels of their milestone 100,000 whole body MRIs, we sat down with Prenuvo Founder and CEO Andrew Lacy to discuss advancements in preventive health scanning, the importance of early detection in healthcare and the role of insurance in making these services accessible.
Andrew Lacy on…
Competing with ignorance
Probably one of the biggest challenges right now is general awareness that these technologies exist. When people ask us who our competition is, we often say that our competition is ignorance that you can go and get one of these scans. This is true with respect to consumers but it’s also true with respect to physicians who tend to carry a notion of what MRI was like when they went to medical school, maybe 20 or 30 years earlier. However, the technology has come a long way; our ability to screen at diagnostic quality the entire body in under an hour is something that’s new and unprecedented. And it enabled technology that previously was really only available in tertiary hospitals in a three hour imaging session for people that tended to have cancer predisposition syndrome. We’ve taken that technology, sped it up and now made it available for everyone.
Changing the mindset
I think one of both the opportunities and challenges of technology like Prenuvo is that this is a really fundamentally different way of looking at health and healthcare. It’s a much more proactive, much less reactive approach, and in the short term, that might add additional costs because you’re doing a screening that you may never have done in the traditional healthcare system. But I believe in the long run, this can really help transform our healthcare system to one that’s a lot leaner – maybe half the size – and obviously with much better outcomes for patients. So it’s a complex intervention that makes it particularly challenging for governments and health insurance companies to really understand how to evaluate it.
Scaling up
Cost comes down as scale goes up. And even though we’ve scanned 100,000 people in the US, that’s 100,000 out of 300 million – it’s relatively small scale. As we learn how to do these scans faster, we can figure out how to operate these clinics more efficiently. There’s a possibility of really bringing down the cost quite a bit, and AI has a role to play there, as one of the most expensive costs is radiology. The more that radiology workload can be offloaded to AI and that AI can help make radiologists more productive, the more costs will be brought down. We’re in the process of collecting evidence for discussions with insurance companies and enterprise, and everyone that comes in, is, in some way, part of that evidence gathering process. So those folks that can afford to get these scans today, are, in fact, paving the way for hopefully having these scans be part of the insurance system in the future.
The preventive approach
We have some frustration with what the traditional annual physical comprises – which is basically nothing. I think most people are disillusioned by the preventative offerings that the health system currently provides, and they’re looking for answers. Prenuvo’s goal is to be 100 times better than what an annual physical might be. Ironically, a lot of people come in for a scan because they want to check they don’t have something life threatening – they’re focused on lifespan, but these scans are so incredible in that they’re able to pick up very, very early stages of degenerative disease when patients are typically asymptomatic. And oftentimes, just lifestyle interventions can make a massive difference as to whether that condition ever arrives at a chronic stage. The vast majority of our healthcare expenditure is on treating chronic disease, and the biggest gap in healthspan, how healthy the life is that we’re living, relates to whether or not we have chronic disease. So this is a real opportunity to get ahead of those things.
