By Kyle Nachreiner
For WisBusiness.com
Greg Dockter believes he should be able to help anyone who walks up to the counter at the pharmacy where he works. So Dockter was disappointed when one day a man, who had been using the blood thinner Warfarin, walked in with a nosebleed and all he could do was offer him a tissue.
“It seemed like a waste that I couldn’t do anything more as a pharmacist and being a health care professional,” Dockter said. “It got me thinking, because I had a lot of nosebleeds as a kid and I was always really annoyed by it.”
Dockter’s thinking eventually led to the development of DrNoze, a natural topical gel that assists the body in forming natural clots at the site of bleeding. The medication is designed to stop bleeding within a minute.
Following that helpless day at the pharmacy, Dockter began performing his own trials at home, where he used a cotton swab and abrasive method to give himself nosebleeds. He then would time how long it took to stop the nosebleeds using the herb yarrow.
“They went surprisingly well,” said the Cottage Grove entrepreneur. “With using some of the components and not the fully-formulated gel of it, I was able to get things to stop in a minute time frame on average. So I kind of knew I had something there.”
From there Dockter launched ByzMed, a private pharmaceutical preparations company that will produce DrNoze. Byzmed will also market to the retail sector through drugstores, mass retailers and grocery stores. The company’s business plan is a finalist in the Governor’s Business Plan Contest.
There are many similar products on the market today, but Dockter says DrNoze is unique because it is the first natural topical gel, which can be easily applied through a nasal swab. The products also forms smaller clots than the other products—which tend to form large clots—and works in a minute, having the advantage of a “quicker return to activity” over the other products, according to Dockter.
“Most of the other products are essentially glorified tissues that help to absorb some of the blood,” he explained. “With this type of product being a gel, you swab it on and it’s not going to form a large clot on the area, more of a micro clot on the area.”
DrNoze recently won a competition through UW-Whitewater’s Innovation Service Center. Dockter says they helped him formulate and assess who his target market should be. So far, the sports arena appears to be the best place for DrNoze.
“Right now I’m looking at the sports medicine field,” Dockter said. “I would like to have it in most of the contact spots, whether it’s wrestling or the boxing association…”
Dockter’s hope is to one day walk into retail stores, drug stores, and grocery stores and see his product easily accessible on the shelves, because for him it is all about an easy, quick solution. That’s why he is also targeting his product towards older segments of the population who are on blood thinners due to heart conditions.
“That can be a very anxious moment for those people, one in which they wish to stop the bleeding quickly,” he said.
With DrNoze, someday they may be able to do just that.
The company is among the semi-finalists in the 2011 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest. The contest will culminate June 7-8 at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Conference, to be held at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee.
— Nachreiner is a student in the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communication.
