Ulysse
Product

A real-time map of the veterinary patient population

Ulysse connects to veterinary practice systems, standardises the underlying clinical data, and enables animal health sponsors to identify where eligible patients are, then recruit them into trials through their trusted vet.

Live feasibility counts Cohort search Site selection Enrolment tracking Practice benchmarking
The market gap

Sponsors cannot find the patients their trials need

Animal health companies invest heavily in development, then identify patients for pivotal studies with tools no more sophisticated than phone calls and spreadsheets. Four things are broken at once.

No visibility of patients

Sponsors cannot see where eligible animals are. Site selection relies on personal networks, KOL relationships and guesswork.

Fragmented, siloed data

Clinical records sit in dozens of incompatible practice management systems and unstructured PDFs, unsearchable at scale.

Recruitment delays trials

Enrolment is a leading cause of study delay and cost overrun, pushing back product launches in a competitive pipeline race.

Manual screening burden

Vets screen charts by hand for each protocol, and practices have little incentive or tooling to participate in research.

The consequence. Recruitment spend flows to CROs and manual outreach, and no software layer captures it. The bottleneck is not scientific and it is not budget. It is that nobody can see the patient population.
The opportunity

Veterinary research is ready for a data layer

Market is big

  • Roughly $70bn global animal health market in 2025, growing high single digits
  • Roughly $45bn+ companion animal segment by the mid-2030s on pet humanisation
  • $0.5 to 1bn+ annual R&D spend at each top-five sponsor: Zoetis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck Animal Health, Elanco, Ceva

Trials are getting harder

  • R&D is shifting to chronic and specialty conditions: oncology, dermatology, mobility, monoclonals
  • Eligible patients are rarer, and recruitment is the bottleneck for every pivotal and post-marketing study
  • Recruitment spend flows to CROs and manual outreach, with no software layer capturing it

Enablers are ready

  • Consolidation, including IVC Evidensia, CVS, VetPartners and Medivet, plus cloud practice management, concentrates data access
  • Modern language models make free-text notes and PDF histories machine-readable at low cost
  • Human real-world data networks such as TriNetX and Flatiron proved the model. No veterinary equivalent exists

Market figures are directional estimates from public industry research. Scope definitions vary by source.

How it works

One engine: source the data, structure it, serve it

The product is not a marketplace and not a services business. It is a single pipeline with an interface at each end: practices at one end, sponsors at the other.

1 · Source the data

Every practice can connect, with or without a modern practice management system.

Practices on a PMS

Direct API integrations with cloud and server practice management systems, plus diagnostic-lab data feeds.

Practices without a PMS

A secure upload portal: scanned histories, PDFs and paper records digitised with OCR and language models.

Why they connect

Revenue share, complimentary benchmarking and trial income give every practice a commercial reason to join.

2 · The data engine

A cloud-based, vendor-agnostic back end.

Standardise

Every record mapped to one unified veterinary data model: diagnoses, drugs, labs, signalment.

Anonymise

GDPR-compliant de-identification. Owner identity never leaves the practice.

Analyse

Language models structure free-text notes, and the cohort engine computes live patient counts and site density.

3 · The platform

Interfaces for each side of the market.

Sponsor interface

Cohort search, live feasibility, site selection and enrolment tracking for trial teams.

Practice interface

Benchmarking dashboards with prescribing and outcomes insights returned to the clinic.

Data products

APIs and reports for research, commercial and market-intelligence use cases.

From matched cohort to enrolled patient. Cases surface in-clinic and owners are engaged by their own vet, the highest-trust channel in animal health.
Operating model

Six steps, end to end

1

Practices share data

Practice management systems, lab feeds and medical-record PDFs flow in from partner practices and corporate groups.

2

Ulysse structures it

Records are standardised, de-identified and coded against one veterinary data model: diagnoses, drugs, labs, signalment.

3

Sponsors search and test criteria

Species, breed, diagnosis, labs, treatment history and location queried against live, de-identified cohorts, so eligibility criteria are tested before a protocol is locked.

4

Feasibility and site selection

Patient counts and site-level density shape the protocol and select the right practices before launch, in seconds rather than months.

5

Vets recruit trusted owners

Matched cases surface in-clinic and the owner is approached by the vet who already treats their animal.

6

Enrolment tracked, fees earned

Sponsors monitor screening and enrolment live. Ulysse earns platform and per-patient recruitment fees, and the practice earns its share.

Steps 2 to 4 are already built and running. The working engine takes 320 consultation notes across four different practice systems, in English and French, structures them with no manual template per format, and returns a feasibility cohort in seconds. See the case example.
What it solves for

What a sponsor actually gets

Accelerated recruitment

Live feasibility counts and pre-identified patients compress enrolment timelines by months.

De-risked protocols

Eligibility criteria tested against real patient populations before a protocol is finalised.

Lower screening cost

Manual chart review and site outreach replaced with targeted, data-driven recruitment.

Aligned practices

Revenue share, benchmarking analytics and trial income make participation a profit line rather than a burden.

Why it works

Sources of competitive advantage

Data-driven cohort engine

A harmonised veterinary data model across incompatible practice systems. Language models unlock free-text notes and PDF histories. Live queries return feasibility counts in seconds, not months.

Aligned network incentives

Revenue share and trial income for practices and corporate groups, complimentary benchmarking analytics, and a new monetisation channel for practice management vendors who host data they do not exploit. Every party benefits when a trial recruits.

Trust and compliance by design

GDPR-compliant de-identification, owner consent managed at practice level by the treating vet, transparent data-use terms and RCVS-aware veterinary clinical governance from the first integration.

Defensibility. Exclusive data partnerships and the harmonised data model compound with every practice added, which makes this a network-effect data asset rather than a feature.
Competitive positioning

Competing with the status quo, not with software

Most veterinary trials recruit today through KOL networks, CRO site outreach and manual chart review: slow, manual, and with no performance visibility. Ulysse is the only position that combines live patient visibility with end-to-end recruitment through the trusted vet.

University teaching hospitals

Full-service investigator networks, but limited to their own caseload. They miss first-opinion practices, where the patients actually are.

Registries and referral databases

Data snapshots without a recruitment workflow. Insight only, no execution.

Human real-world data players

TriNetX and Flatiron proved this quadrant works in human trials. None has entered veterinary medicine.

Revenue model

Recurring platform revenue, aligned incentives on all sides

Platform subscriptions

Annual licences for sponsors: live feasibility counts, cohort search and site-density analytics across the network.

Per-trial recruitment fees

Success-based fees per screened or enrolled patient, replacing spend that currently goes to manual outreach.

Insights and analytics

De-identified prescribing, outcomes and market intelligence for pharma teams, and over time decision and purchasing insights sold to clinics themselves.

Value shared with data partners. Practices and corporate groups receive revenue share, complimentary benchmarking analytics and trial income for their clinics, so research participation becomes a profit line rather than a burden. Practice management vendors gain a monetisation channel for data they host but do not exploit, with Ulysse handling compliance, structuring and sponsor demand.
Go to market

Land in the UK, prove with one protocol, expand

Target market

  • UK and EU companion animal trials, a beachhead where practice consolidation makes data partnerships tractable
  • Specialty and chronic conditions, including oncology, dermatology and mobility, where patients are rarest and recruitment pain is highest
  • Buyers: clinical development and clinical operations teams at top-ten sponsors and veterinary CROs

Initial penetration

  • Anchor data agreement with one corporate group or cloud practice management vendor, for instant scale from a single partnership
  • 30+ discovery interviews to confirm willingness to pay and partnership terms
  • One paid pilot protocol with a single sponsor, demonstrating recruitment uplift against a manual baseline

Channel and partners

  • Corporate groups and practice management vendors as data partners, aligned via revenue share
  • Practices recommend trials to owners, and the trusted-vet channel drives owner consent
  • Incubator and industry networks for sponsor access, pilot design and regulatory guidance
Long-term vision

The definitive data platform for animal health

Trial recruitment is the wedge. The end state is the largest structured pet health database, monetised across research, pharma commercial teams and the clinics themselves.

Phase 1 · The wedge

Trial feasibility and recruitment

UK companion animals. Funds the data build-out.

Phase 2 · The research layer

Surveillance and expansion

EU and US expansion, livestock and equine, post-marketing surveillance and pharmacovigilance.

Phase 3 · The intelligence platform

The largest pet health database

Prescribing dynamics, outcomes and market data for pharma, plus decision and purchasing insights for clinics.

Compounding by design. Every new use case makes the dataset more valuable, which makes it a compounding data asset at the centre of a roughly $70bn industry.