Three tiers, three builds, agreed first
Collaboration via skin in the game
Light Touch for a single question; Strong Signal for an artefact; Bullet Proof for the launch.
We cost from the scope. The indicative ranges below anchor to our £500 per hour senior clinical-regulatory rate; the exact figure follows the shape of the engagement.
Read the three tiers, then read the win-win-or-pull-out test that sits behind every one of them.
The three tiers
Light Touch, Strong Signal, Bullet Proof
Tier one
Light Touch
One question, one workstream, one deliverable. Usually a regulatory-positioning memo, a clinical-claims audit, or a single Claude Code project bootstrap. Reads like a strong second opinion, costs less than a fortnight of head-count.
Typical scope: 20 to 40 hours. Always a two-person team at our end, clinical and technical expertise paired on every deliverable. One revision round. Output is one document, delivered.
Indicative fee: £10,000 to £20,000
Tier two
Strong Signal
A real piece of work with a real artefact at the end. Manufacturer-evidence dossier; agent-stack prototype on your data behind your own key; market-entry strategy with named clinicians round the table.
Typical scope: 80 to 160 hours. Two-person team at our end. Two revision rounds. Output is a working artefact, not a deck.
Indicative fee: £40,000 to £80,000
Tier three
Bullet Proof
End to end. Regulatory, clinical, technical, commercial. We bring the whole stack: device-affairs experience, paediatric and adult diabetes clinical practice, working AI agent infrastructure. We work alongside the client team until the artefact is in their hands and the launch path is clear.
Typical scope: 300 hours plus, over 3 to 6 months. Multi-person team. Unbounded revision within scope. Output is the launch.
Indicative fee: from £150,000
What the work looks like
See a sample dossier
When we take on a bigger piece of work, one of the things we hand over is a dossier: a single, careful document that shows exactly how a product or service holds up. It is what you would put in front of a regulator, a senior clinician, or an insurer when they ask the hard questions. The two samples below are taken from the dossiers behind the GNL launch.
We have left the opening half of each one readable: who the company is, how it is set up, the rules it works under, how it is positioned, and the standards it writes to. The detailed inner workings are blanked out, and clearly marked where they have been removed. In a real piece of work that detail is shared with the client privately, under a confidentiality agreement. What the sample shows you is the shape, the depth, and the standard of the finished thing.
GNL Site Dossier, structural sample
This one covers the wider platform: who the company is and how it is set up, its insurance and risk position, the rules it works under, the story behind it, and the standards it writes to.
Grace Dossier, structural sample
This one covers Grace, the diabetes education advisor: what Grace is, how it works alongside the other tools, where it sits with the regulator, and the safety limits built around it.
Who passes the filter
Who we say yes to
Three substrates pass the internal filter; we name them so a prospect can self-select before any call.
CGM, top of the DSN Forum chart
If you are a CGM manufacturer scoring 5/5 on the DSN Forum UK CGM chart and you want to enhance your marketing, sales and commercial functions with an evidence-anchored agent stack, we are your partner. Your top 20% orchestrate the agents; the agents do the 80% of the work that used to fill a whole department.
Lactate, the metabolic canary
If you are working on lactate as the canary in the coal mine for metabolic disease, a biomarker relevant to at least 50% of the population aged 40 and over, then we are your partner. We become your evidence and ethics anchor.
Bolus advisor, honest IOB
If you are building a bolus advisor and need IOB modelled honestly, we are interested. We will not let you ship a number you cannot defend.
AID exercise and IOB, in lockstep
If you are an AID manufacturer adding exercise or IOB features and you want a partner that operates in lockstep with the evidence rather than around it, we are interested.
Who we say no to
CGM, into non-diabetes wellness
If you are a CGM manufacturer looking to enter the non-diabetes wellness market, we are not the team for you. Our internal will not let us support a signal we do not believe is good enough for the people you would be selling it to.
CGM scoring under 5/5
If you are a CGM manufacturer whose device scores below 5/5 on the DSN Forum UK CGM chart, we are not the right partner. Until the signal is good enough for the people relying on it, marketing and commercial work is not where the gap closes.
AID without published efficacy
If you are an AID manufacturer without published data on efficacy and effectiveness in peer-reviewed journals, we will not take the work. The evidence base is the bar; we cannot frame a system we cannot verify.
The get-out clause
The win-win-or-pull-out test
Operational rule
We hold a clear policy. If the work does not benefit the end user, or the ethics do not fit, we do not take it. If the approach changes mid-engagement and contravenes that test, we pull out, immediately.
The model, in John’s own voice
An hour-long conversation on how Via Negativa works
In May 2026 Arseniy Arsentyev invited John onto his podcast Tomorrow’s Medicine for an hour on the record. The conversation walks through the three Taleb filters that sit underneath every Via Negativa engagement (Black Swan precaution, clarity by subtraction, skin in the game), how the agent stack runs alongside GNL Grace, why we only build for products we believe in, and what we expect the next two years to do to diabetes-device commercial teams.
If you would rather hear the model explained than read it, this is the resource. The decode lives on the GNL site with fourteen timestamped chapters; the agent-stack section is at the sixty-three-minute mark.
How we close
How we close the scope
None of the three tiers is right for everybody. Send us the question; we will tell you which one fits, or that none of them does.
Talk to us. One inbox: john@theglucoseneverlies.com