As a pediatric ear, nose and throat doctor at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Dr. Steve Goudy has spent his career helping parents when their babies are congested.
Over and over again, he's seen the need for a better solution when parents must alleviate their baby’s stuffy nose — without having to visit a doctor.
Despite no background in entrepreneurship or technology, Goudy founded Dr. Noze Best, a health technology startup based in Atlanta that specializes in solutions for pediatric care.
His startup’s first product, NozeBot, is an FDA-registered nasal aspirator for babies that went on the market this year. The product, which costs about $100, is available directly to consumers on his website and Amazon.
The small machine hooks to a tube that attaches to a parent’s hand. When a baby is congested, mom or dad can turn on the machine and suction the baby’s snot to alleviate their congestion.
“Babies who are less than a year of age can’t breathe through their mouth,” Goudy said. “If they get a bad cold — which could happen six to 10 times a year — they can’t breathe well and don’t sleep. As a parent, you don’t sleep and you’re stressed, especially if it’s your first cold.”
Goudy said other solutions on the market are ineffective — and/or gross. He pointed to one competitive product in which parents have to suck snot out of their babies’ noses through a tube.
Goudy, who bootstrapped Dr. Noze Best, took the idea for the NozeBot to a Georgia Tech senior design class, where students helped him develop a prototype. He said his job as a pediatric doctor doubled as customer discovery for the product.
"It’s just listening to patients tell me over and over, ‘This is a problem,’” Goudy said. “I started telling them about my idea, and they would come back and ask for it because they perceive this to be an unmet need.”
The Atlanta tech ecosystem was a huge help when founding the company, Goudy said. Along with Georgia Tech’s assistance, Dr. Noze Best received a grant from Georgia Research Alliance and help from the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) and Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.
So far, Goudy said the product has mostly been advertised through word of mouth and social media ads.
“It’s been nice to have a product growing out of the Atlanta ecosystem,” Goudy said. “We get fast feedback.”
Goudy said he’s spending this year focused on the NozeBot launch and getting it into more parents’ hands. He said he hopes to create more pediatric health technology products and encourage others in the medical field to get their ideas off the napkin and into the market.
