Opportunity Analyzer

What the three axes are

The questionnaire asks 18 questions across three axes. They are the same three an experienced team argues about in a room, written down so the argument has a structure and so the weighting is visible instead of implied.

Technical feasibility

How far the core technology has been taken, how well the closest devices on the public record are known, how settled the regulatory route is for a device of that type, how complex the manufacturing is, how well understood the verification and testing work is, and how much of the product is software handling patient data.

Market desirability

How strong the evidence is that the problem is unmet, how clearly the buyer is known, how crowded the field already is, how much clinical work would have to change, what standard of evidence the adopting clinicians would expect, and what access exists to clinicians willing to try it.

Financial viability

How large the development effort is next to work the organisation has completed before, how long until a first paying customer, how the product would be paid for once in use, what the cost and margin structure looks like, how the work is funded until revenue, and how much selling effort each unit needs.

What the score is, and what it is not

The score is arithmetic over your own answers. It contains no information about your device and no data about any market, because it has neither.

Each answer option carries a point value from 0 to 10 in the rubric file. Each question carries a stated weight, written into that file so the number of questions in an axis is never a hidden weighting. An axis score is the percentage of the maximum that the questions you answered could have reached, and the composite is a weighted mean of the axis scores — not of the raw points, which would let the longest axis dominate the headline number.

A question you skip is excluded from that calculation and counted on the screen. It is never scored as zero. That choice has a cost, and the cost is paid in public: a score built from a few answers looks identical to one built from many, so no score is ever shown without the number of questions behind it.

It follows that two people can score the same idea differently, and neither is wrong. The score measures the answers, and the answers are assumptions. That is why the useful output of this tool is the list of questions it leaves you holding, not the number.

What this tool will not do

• It makes no regulatory finding. Which route applies to a specific device is a determination made by qualified people against a specific claim and a specific design.
• It makes no finding about payment or coverage. How a product gets paid for is a specialist question about a specific product in a specific setting.
• It is not investment advice. It is an educational self-assessment that turns your stated assumptions into a structured list of open questions.
• It states no market figures. There are no market sizes, no money amounts and no market percentages anywhere in it, because it has no data that would support any.
• It compares you to nobody. No submissions are collected, so there is no set of other people's answers to be ranked against, and there never will be without a separate decision.

Where the rubric lives

Everything the tool says comes from one versioned file, and the version and the date it last changed are printed under every score. That file is authored judgement, not code, and it is currently a draft: every commentary line, flag explanation and next question in it is explicitly marked as awaiting authorship, and the tool says so on every view and on the printed brief. When it is authored, the marks come off one line at a time by the person who owns the judgement — not with a find-and-replace.

Your answers

They stay in your own browser for the session and are transmitted nowhere. If you use the form to unlock the full breakdown, that form sends your email address and a tag, and nothing else. The breakdown then unlocks in your browser immediately; it is not emailed, and the page says so rather than implying a message that never arrives.

Why we are giving it away

Because the three-axis framework is not the hard part — applying it to a specific device, with the evidence to defend each answer, is. This tool hands you the framework and the questions. It cannot hand you the judgement, and it does not pretend to: every commentary line you see is still a marked draft.

Where a score is uncomfortable, the useful next step is the evidence behind it — which is what the DHF buildout and a design sprint are for.

Questions

What is the score, exactly?

It is arithmetic over your own answers. Each answer carries a point value from 0 to 10 in the rubric file, each question carries a stated weight, and an axis score is the percentage of the maximum the questions you answered could have reached. It is not a measurement of your idea and it contains no data about any market.

What happens to questions I skip?

They are excluded from the score and counted on screen, never scored as zero. An unanswered question is missing information, not a bad answer, so a score built from six answers is not lower than one built from twelve. Every score is shown with the number of questions behind it.

Where do the questions and the commentary come from?

A single rubric file that ships with the tool. It is versioned, dated, and readable: the version and the date it last changed appear under every score. Today that rubric is a draft, and every line of commentary in it is marked as awaiting authorship.

Do you keep my answers?

No. The answers stay in your own browser session and are never transmitted. If you use the form to unlock the full breakdown, that form posts your email address and a tag and nothing else — the breakdown then unlocks in your browser, in that session. We do not email it.

Why are the axis scores not behind the email form?

Because a tool that shows you nothing until you pay in contact details is not a free tool. The three axis scores, the chart, the composite and the written summary are always visible. The form unlocks the per-answer commentary, the flag explanations and the questions a rigorous evaluation would answer next.

Can this tell me which regulatory route to use, or how a device would be paid for?

No, and it does not try. Those are determinations made by qualified people against a specific device and a specific claim. This tool turns your stated assumptions into a structured question list; it has no data about your device and makes no finding about it.

What is a flag?

An individual answer the rubric marks for attention on its own, whatever the axis scored. A strong average can sit on top of one answer that has to be dealt with first, which is the reason flags are separate from the arithmetic rather than folded into it.