idea-002 · viability deck
Every slide states a condition that would have to be true, then reports where it stands using the candidate file's own claim and its own confidence tag. A deck never upgrades a tag, invents a number, or recommends anything, and there is no ask slide.
The chair: the investor, and the operator who has to sell a consumable into veterinary practices with no payer behind it.
How to read this: every slide is a condition, not a conclusion. A bracketed claim reference points into knowledge-base/candidates/idea-002.md — the number is the claim's position in its ## Claims list, the tag is copied from it and never adjusted here. A [no claim] marker means nothing in the file speaks to the condition at all. No number appears here that is not in a claim, and there is no ask slide. See docs/deck-spec.md.
What changed since the 2026-08-24 build: nothing on the money. Every commercial condition on this deck is exactly where it was, because the work since then was clinical literature and the veterinary market has no CMS and no openFDA to check anything against. What did change is one competitive datum drawn from the human product code [claim 37: unconfirmed]. Rebuilt from the file, not patched.
Would have to be true: The owner would have to pay cash at the point of service, through the practice's margin on a consumable — there is no other payer in this market.
Where it stands: The candidate states it and the file cannot check it: there is no third-party payer code, HCPCS or otherwise, for veterinary NPWT, and the claim is "structurally unanswerable here" with no run made [claim 11: unconfirmed]. Pet insurance is claimed to sit under 5% of owned dogs, which would make it immaterial as a demand driver [claim 12: unconfirmed]. Owner willingness to pay is on record and unchecked [claim 21: unconfirmed].
What would settle it: A pet-insurance industry association penetration figure and a practice's own realisation data on adjunct therapies, both human-attached.
If it's false: Read this one carefully — the absence of a payer is not only a risk. It removes the coverage gate that blocks most of the human candidates in this repo, and it means price is set by willingness to pay rather than by a fee schedule. The risk it creates is the mirror image: no reimbursement floor under the price either. Contrast idea-001, where the fee schedule turned out to set a floor of $74.52 and that was the problem.
Would have to be true: Nothing. This is the rare candidate where all three questions are moot, and the interesting work is saying precisely why that is not automatically good news.
Where it stands:
The trade is explicit and it is the shape of the whole candidate: no payer gate to clear, and no payer to fund the therapy or to require documentation that would protect a moat. Every dollar of revenue has to be argued for at the exam-room counter.
What would settle it: Nothing to check here. The work is on the demand side — willingness-to-pay research at referral practices.
If it's false: It is not false; it is the market's structure. Read it against the regulatory position on the feasibility deck, where the same absence of gatekeeping cuts the other way.
Would have to be true: A qualifying caseload, a defensible unit price, and a reachable share of it.
Where it stands:
Every input is unverifiable through this repo, and for a reason worth naming rather than regretting: this is a veterinary market, and the connectors that produce real numbers elsewhere in this pipeline are CMS and openFDA, neither of which sees it at all. idea-001 in this same portfolio had its two checkable TAM components resolved this week; this candidate has none to resolve.
What would settle it: Veterinary teaching-hospital caseload data; distributor unit volumes for existing human NPWT sold into veterinary channels; a contract-manufacturing quote for the dressing and pump to fix the margin.
If it's false: TAM is a hard kill condition. It is also, on this candidate, the factor least likely ever to be verified — which is a fact about the pipeline's reach, not about the market's size, and Stage 5 correctly reads it as queued-research rather than a kill.
Would have to be true: Dressing tooling, sterile packaging validation and one or two prospective teaching-hospital case series would have to be the whole bill — with no IND/IDE-equivalent in the way.
Where it stands: That is the candidate's claim, unbenchmarked [claim 18: unconfirmed], and the regulatory half of it is the strongest verified fact in the file: manufacturers of devices used exclusively in veterinary medicine are not required to register establishments or list devices with FDA [claim 2: verified], and the human equivalent's Class II status [claim 4: verified] is a comparator rather than an obligation. The premarket exemption itself rests on a Compliance Policy Guide no connector in this repo can read [claim 1: unconfirmed], and post-market misbranding authority is asserted but unchecked [claim 3: unconfirmed]. The packaging and tooling half is on record and unchecked [claim 31: unconfirmed]. The case-series line item is now better specified than it was: the literature the research lane surfaced shows what a series in this space looks like — 42 horses [claim 36: unconfirmed], 50 dogs [claim 34: unconfirmed] — though none of those findings is appraised.
What would settle it: A contract-manufacturer quote for dressing tooling and sterile packaging validation; a teaching-hospital case-series budget; a regulatory-counsel read of CPG 655.100 and of what labelling claims are safe to make without premarket review.
If it's false: The one genuinely cheap thing about this candidate stops being cheap, and its main advantage over every human-market candidate in this repo evaporates.
Would have to be true: The drape chemistry and limb interface would have to be genuinely patentable and genuinely hard — because nothing else here stops anyone.
Where it stands: The moat claim names those two assets and concedes the pump is a commodity that confers nothing [claim 16: unconfirmed]. Against it, the file states the structural problem plainly: fast-follower risk is elevated precisely because there is no premarket review — a competitor faces no regulatory delay, only tooling and distribution [claim 17: unconfirmed], a deduction resting on the same regulatory facts that make entry cheap for this candidate [claim 2: verified]. The patent position, which is the only real defence, could not be checked at all: the two foundational Wake Forest patents came back unconfirmed for a missing credential [claim 5: unconfirmed], [claim 6: unconfirmed] — the claims record PATENTSVIEW_API_KEY as unset, and the repo's IP connector has since migrated to EPO Open Patent Services, so the credential to supply now is EPO_OPS_KEY/EPO_OPS_SECRET. The live-patent question that actually matters — the single-use canister-free family — is "not checkable as written" by the connector at all [claim 7: unconfirmed].
What would settle it: Supply the EPO OPS credentials to unblock the expiry checks; the live-family landscape needs a hand search or counsel, which no credential fixes.
If it's false: A commodity consumable in a market with no regulatory barrier to entry — the shape that gets copied the month after it works.
Would have to be true: The incumbent would have to be beatable — and the incumbent is a human product already being bought for this use.
Where it stands: The off-label human single-use device is not a hypothetical competitor: it is the device in the published canine and equine work [claim 8: verified], [claim 10: verified], and the candidate names it as the thing surgeons would have to be persuaded to stop buying [claim 19: unconfirmed]. Whether its price is comparable is on record and unchecked [claim 25: unconfirmed]. Distribution access is likewise unbacked [claim 26: unconfirmed]. And the competitive picture cannot be scanned: openFDA holds no records for animal-only devices, so an empty clearances or recalls result on this candidate is coverage absence, never competitive absence. One exception is now on record and it is the most useful competitive datum in the file: because the human code is visible, a recall scan found 51% (19 of 37) of recalls for canistered NPWT pumps name a canister, dressing-connector or tubing defect [claim 37: unconfirmed] — a documented weakness in the architecture this product does not use. Note also the human evidence favours the format itself [claim 33: unconfirmed].
What would settle it: Distributor catalogues (Covetrus, Patterson Vet, MWI) for what is marketed; VMX/WVC exhibitor lists; ACVS abstract books. The patent connector is the one tool here that sees this field honestly, because patents do not respect the human/veterinary labelling boundary.
If it's false: Read it inverted — the risk is not an empty field, it is a field this pipeline is blind to, and a competitor already in the room in human packaging.
Would have to be true: A set of API credentials and two distributor catalogues would have to move the FTO and competitive questions from unaskable to answerable.
Where it stands: Two claims are unconfirmed for a missing credential rather than a missing fact [claim 5: unconfirmed], [claim 6: unconfirmed] — the expiry status of the foundational NPWT patents is a lookup away once credentials exist. The live-family question needs a different tool entirely [claim 7: unconfirmed]. The demand-side questions need people, not tools [claim 19: unconfirmed], [claim 21: unconfirmed]. This deck's next test is unchanged from the last build, and that is itself worth reporting: a week of work went into this candidate and none of it touched the commercial position, because the tooling that could has no reach into a veterinary market.
What would settle it: Supply the EPO OPS credentials; pull the distributor catalogues; then book the practice interviews.
If it's false: Nothing here is false — this is a work order, and the first item on it costs an email.
Every condition above with nothing verified behind it.
Two verified claims sit under all of this [claim 2: verified], [claim 4: verified], and both are regulatory. No commercial claim in this file has ever been verified, and on current tooling none can be — there is no CMS for animals.
If only one thing from this chair could be checked: whether the live single-use canister-free NPWT patent family blocks this design [claim 7: unconfirmed].
It is the only condition on this deck that is an automatic kill under the Stage 5 gate rather than a bad number, and it is the only thing standing between this candidate and a market with no regulatory barrier to entry at all [claim 2: verified], [claim 17: unconfirmed]. In a field where a follower faces only tooling and distribution, the patent position is not one moat among several — it is the moat. It is also the question this repo currently cannot ask: the connector takes a patent number, not a landscape, and migrating it to a new provider did not change that.
Naming it is not a recommendation, a gate, or a kill.