A Good Podcast: Prenuvo co-founder Andrew Lacy

How I Built This With, Guy Raz: Full body preventive health care with Andrew Lacy of Prenuvo

I’d heard of Prenuvo, a company that offers full body MRI scans to detect potential diseases in the body before they become symptomatic, on a podcast a few years ago. They popped back into my conscious recently when I came across this article, How Much Would You Pay For Peace of Mind?, detailing patient complaints of inaccurate reporting, false positives, and an overall feeling of anxiety due to the uncertainty of their scan. So when I saw this episode with Prenuvo co-founder Andrew Lacy, I tuned in to hear what he might have to say in defense.

Prenuvo currently operates 9 locations, 8 in the U.S., and 1 in Canada, with 11 more in the pipeline (they’re coming to Denver in August 2024). For $3,000 and 1 hour of your time you can get a full body scan that can detect things like early signs of cancer, liver disease, aneurysms, and even multiple sclerosis. The preventative medicine industry is now a $250 billion per year market that’s growing, and Prenuvo seems well-positioned to take advantage.

But with change and new technology comes criticism and fear.

Many doctors are sounding the alarm stating that the false positives (16% rate of occurrence) created by scans such as these leave people with anxiety and could result in unnecessary and expensive treatments or surgeries (i.e. removing a benign tumor).

But Andrew Lacy doesn’t see it that way. With 32% of scans revealing a legit abnormality according to a meta-analysis, Andrew see the pros largely outweighing the cons. The difference he says is in their custom software and hardware, specifically designed for fast and efficient whole body scans. He believes that we should be looking at the body as the sum of its parts, not its individual parts (like generic MRIs do). By scanning the whole body they’re able to make connections, like telling you about your heart by looking at your brain. 

Change is hard, especially when it has the potential to disrupt a whole industry. As preventative medicine continues its march to eclipse sick medicine, these dinosaur healthcare companies have taken notice, and are doing their best to sow doubt in the minds of would be patients and doctors. The dollars they stand to lose are enormous. Just as one example, ever year we spend $100 billion on late stage cancer drugs. Meanwhile to scan the whole population of the United States every 2 years would only cost $60 billion according to Andrew. Pretty compelling.

There are real concerns, like the potential for false positives, and complaints of poor service and inaccurate reporting (the severity of which increases drastically when it comes to your health). But if there’s one thing that Andrew Lacey is right about, it’s that a whole body approach to your health is essential.

This was another great episode of How I Built This With, Guy Raz.