He realized the true impact of the problem while caring for a child with Down syndrome who’d been admitted to the hospital with RSV. “When I walked in the room, the mom looked at me and said, ‘Look, doctor, I don’t need you. I just need that suction on the wall,’” Dr. Goudy said. He’s since started Dr. Noze Best, a company that develops and sells devices designed to support babies’ respiratory systems, including Nozebot, an electric nasal aspirator with hospital-grade suction, and BreathEZ, a humidifier.
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May 2025Successful otolaryngology innovations must meet three primary criteria, Dr. Gonzales said: They must serve a true clinical need, have a pathway to regulatory clearance and reimbursement, and provide funders with a reasonable return. Keep those three criteria in mind as you consider problems and potential solutions—but also keep an open mind.
“Medicine is all about drilling down to the right answer and then executing it perfectly. Entrepreneurship is the opposite: It’s about keeping things broad and vague, at least in the early stages, and pivoting as necessary,” Dr. Goudy says.
He got lucky on his first try: Because the electric nasal aspirator he developed is considered a Class II device, it’s exempt from premarket notification requirements and didn’t require clinical testing or U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
Step 2: Research and Protect Your Ideas
Spend some time on uspto.gov, the website of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. You can see what patents have already been filed and discover what gaps still exist in the market. You can also learn a lot about the patenting process.
A patent is essential if you have an idea for a drug, device, or process that you hope to monetize in the future. Although input from others is a crucial part of innovation and invention, would-be inventors and entrepreneurs should secure the rights to their ideas before sharing them with others.
Many physician–entrepreneurs stumble on that step. “It is really important to patent your idea before disclosing it in presentations or publications,” Dr. Gonzales said. “In order for you to be able to profit from your work, you need to own it. A lot of physicians go directly to industry with a great idea, but that’s like building your home on land you don’t own. Patenting is buying the land. It provides the foundation for development and is the first important step in value creation.”
You do not have to wait until you have a fully fleshed-out, functional idea to file for patent protection. You can file a provisional patent application to protect your idea and give yourself time to develop it. A provisional patient application establishes a priority date— essentially, the date you officially claimed your idea—and gives you 12 months to further develop your idea before securing a full patent.
With a provisional patent in place, you can safely share your idea with others under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) while retaining ownership and control of your intellectual property (IP). If, on the other hand, you begin working with an engineer or business partner before securing your IP, you may need to include them on any eventual patent applications. In some cases, that approach makes sense. In most cases, however, you can maximize your return on investment by filing a provisional patent application before discussing your idea with anyone else.
“The financial rewards are significantly greater if you don’t dilute your rights and company ownership at the beginning,” Dr. Das said.
If you have an academic appointment, you’ll have to follow your institution’s guidelines, which typically require employees to submit patentable ideas to the technology transfer office. The office will research and assess the commercial potential of your idea, file and pay for patenting (if your idea qualifies), and facilitate commercialization.
“I often recommend that academic physicians bring their second or third best idea, first, to their tech licensing office,” Dr. Das said. “You’ll make a lot of mistakes your first time trying to develop a product, but you’ll learn a lot, and that will serve you well when you develop any other ideas.”
Step 3: Assemble the Right Team
Very few people can independently develop a product or service and successfully bring it to market. As a physician, you have a deep understanding of the healthcare system and patient and provider needs. You probably don’t know how to build a medical device (or a company!), how to secure funding, or how to get helpful innovations to those who need them. Successful physician–entrepreneurs surround themselves with people who understand their vision and help “fill in the gaps,” Dr. Goudy said.
He initially hired contract engineers to bring his loose sketches of a better nasal aspirator into existence. “I never really got very far with that because I didn’t have the skillset,” he said. When he accepted a job at Emory University, he started working with senior design students at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “They do all the things I had never heard of—customer discovery, looking at predicate devices, building a minimally viable product,” Dr. Goudy said.
He also connected with Atlanta’s startup ecosystem, including businesspeople and entrepreneurs associated with the Georgia Research Alliance and the Atlanta Technology Development Center, which describes itself as a “startup garage to dozens of early-stage science and technology-based companies.” There, Dr. Goudy learned about marketing, manufacturing, and scaling. He also eventually enrolled in and completed an MBA program.
If you don’t have access to a vibrant, pre-existing startup ecosystem, it may be a bit more difficult to build your team and chart your next steps. Begin by expanding your network.
“The traditional meetings and conferences that we go to as otolaryngologists don’t necessarily put us in the right rooms with people who can help,” said Lamont Jones, MD, MBA, vice chair of the department of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at Henry Ford Health in Detroit. Dr. Jones’s research (and business interests) focus on keloid biomarkers and treatment—a concern that sits at the intersection of otolaryngology and dermatology and overlaps with other conditions such as abnormal wound healing and fibrosis—so he attends and speaks at dermatology meetings as well.
“That’s really helped me expand my professional research network,” he said.
Be careful and cautious; don’t let your enthusiasm distract you. The first person (or first few people) to show interest in your idea may not be good partners or team members. “In both business and medicine, you want to work with very honest, high-character, high-integrity people,” Dr. Das said. “Business partnerships are really like a marriage in the sense that you’ll be spending a lot of time together and need to trust your partners a lot. So, you want to make sure you enjoy these people and have the same value system.”
To assemble a successful team, you must be willing to pass on collaborations. Dr. Jones has turned down “opportunities” from potential partners who undervalued what he and his team could contribute and didn’t share his vision. “They weren’t interested in a true collaboration,” he said. “They wanted a transactional arrangement, and I’m looking for more of a collaboration.”
Step 4: Develop a Product or Service and Test Feasibility
Most successful ideas go through multiple iterations before moving to market, and that process can take longer than you may expect.
Melissa Pynnonen, MD, chief of rhinology and skull base surgery at the University of Michigan Health in Ann Arbor and founder of Athena Leadership Consulting, initially didn’t understand why a leadership coach said it took her a year to start a consulting business. “Somebody told me you can set up an LLC in 10 minutes,” Dr. Pynnonen said. “But then I realized that this kind of service-oriented business requires a tremendous amount of deep introspection and reflection.” She’s spent the better part of the past year refining her vision and service offerings and is still tweaking her website and marketing.
Somebody told me you can set up an LLC in 10 minutes. But then I realized that this kind of service-oriented business requires a tremendous amount of deep introspection and reflection. — Melissa Pynnonen, MD
Physical products progress through defined development stages, moving from concept to final design via feasibility studies, engineering, and prototyping. At his second company, Dr. Das worked closely with engineers to develop a small, handheld device that delivers bioelectronic microcurrents to facial nerve fibers, providing drug-free relief from sinus and nasal pressure. Prototypes underwent usability testing, and results were used to refine the design. Their efforts were successful: TIME magazine named Tivic Health’s ClearUP a Top Invention of 2019 (Time. https://tinyurl.com/2ecvffn2).
Step 5: Secure Funding
Dr. Das personally raised a lot of the money that supported the initial development of Tivic Health and ClearUP. Dr. Goudy, founder of Dr. Noze Best, also self-funded his early entrepreneurial efforts. “I took out a loan against my home to get enough money to get product to market,” he said.
Our specialty is poised for growth, with tremendous opportunity and funds available for new startup. — Don Gonzales, MD
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