Mom, doctor and entrepreneur Amy Baxter and her bee-shaped pain relief device Buzzy will come face-to-face with TV’s toughest investors tonight on the reality show Shark Tank.
Hopefully she’ll fare better than the duo of doctors who delivered what Mark Cuban deemed the “worst presentation ever” on the show last fall.
Baxter, a pediatric emergency physician, will be pitching the device she invented to desensitize pain nerves for people getting an injection, blood draw or IV inserted. Placed “between the brain and the pain,” the device combines cold and vibration to block the unpleasant sensation of a needle stick.
She originally invented it with kids in mind, but when Baxter presented as part of the startup showcase at MedCity’s Converge last year, she said it’s been just as popular among adults who experience burning when taking injectable biologic drugs.
And because of that, the doc-entrepreneur said she’s now in conversations with pharma companies who want to give Buzzys away to patients who take those drugs, with the hope of improving compliance. If those deals come through, she’d have to scale quickly.
Baxter had to stay mum on how her already-filmed pitch went and whether she walked away with any new investors, but she did say that the process of pitching wasn’t as intimidating as it might look on TV. “I’d been practicing my pitch nonstop – in front of the mirror, standing on one foot – so on the actual day, I was so prepared it was just exhilarating,” she said.
Her pitch will no doubt hit on the prevalence of needle fear and its affect on public health — an issue she spoke passionately about during a TEDx talk last year.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The eipsode airs tonight at 9 p.m. on ABC.
