Dr Nikita Kanani MBE is Global Medical Director at Neko Health and still a practising NHS GP. Before Neko she was medical director for primary care at NHS England, through the pandemic and the vaccine rollout, and she and Dr James Somauroo start there because it explains everything that comes after.

She is precise about what those years were actually like. Two or three in the morning on Teams in her pyjamas, her daughter building a diorama of the Roman empire beside a call with the Prime Minister, and her mother running the family pharmacy without PPE while her father shielded. She was asked to join the vaccine programme the week before Diwali, argued for delivering it through primary care rather than around forty hospitals, and ended up with thousands of sites and a map on the wall.

The second half is Neko's year three data, which James had read on the train in and came armed to argue about. More than eighty thousand scans in 2025. Life threatening findings holding steady at about one percent across three years, which is her answer to the charge that scanning more people only finds more noise. Five or six dermatology referrals to find a melanoma, against fifteen or twenty in general practice. People with a chronic condition improving two and a half times more than people without one.
There is also an honest stretch on why she thinks worried well is the wrong argument, and where an NHS partnership might go next.

Dr Nikita Kanani on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drnikkikanani/
Neko Health: https://www.nekohealth.com

Apply to be a guest: https://thehealthtechpodcast.com

Produced by SomX: https://somx.health

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