When I first heard that Bullseye Dropper won the Innov8 for Health Start Up Showcase late last year, I thought, “Hmmm, interesting, but I’ll pass.”
Then last month, my 5-year-old son got pink eye and needed eye drops. As I tried to stop his wiggling long enough to get a dose of the antibiotics into his eye, it finally hit me, “Yes, we do need a better eyedropper!”
I was in Cincinnati recently and spoke with Robert Behan, inventor of the Bullseye Dropper. His dad gave him the idea to make it easier to get the right amount of medicine from an eyedropper and to get the medicine into the eye (and not your cheek or the floor).
“My father has hand tremors and he has to take dry eye medication,” Behan said. “With this dropper, he was able to get one drop in his eye for the first time in 10 years.”
The bottle is curved into an arc, with the dropper in the center of the curve. There is an indentation on either side of the tube. To administer a drop, you rest the legs of the bottle above and below your eye and squeeze the dent.
My son needed drops for only a few days. People living with glaucoma must use drops every day, or risk losing their sight. Many people run out of the drops before it’s time for a refill. Legislators in eight states have passed laws that require insurance companies to refill the drops before 30 days if a person runs out.
One researcher watched 300 videos of patients using eye drops and concluded that even people who use drops regularly administer an average of 7 drops each time:
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.
This wastage is expensive with medications that cost more than $1 per drop. Additionally, for patients on pharmacy refill plans, wastage causes them to run out of their medication before they may obtain a refill. These individuals then must decide whether (1) to pay out of pocket to purchase an additional bottle (possibly at inflated prices) to last them until they may get another from their insurance plan, (2) to take the medication less frequently than prescribed until the prescription may be refilled, or (3) to cease using the medication until they may refill the prescription.
Behan figures that insurance companies will have to pay for the tide-me-over dose and estimates it will cost $4 per dose to store and ship. The Bullseye Dropper could solve this problem by reducing waste and making it easier to get the drops into the eye. Behan sees an opportunity for dry eye treatments and for over-the-counter drops as well.
Behan recently had 110 people test the dropper. He generally got positive feedback on the design, and he was surprised to discover how many people were afraid to use an eye dropper in the first place.
“We made the nozzle shorter also because people don’t like it to touch their eyelashes,” he said. “People can look away also when they use our dropper.”
The current design is the 30th iteration. First Behan had to find a designer to create a 3D rendering of the new dropper. Next was the challenge of finding a plastics manufacturer to create a mold for the dropper. He googled blow mold plastics companies and started dialing.
“I called 136 companies and they all said no,” he said. “I changed my search to ‘short run blow mold plastic companies’ and then I found someone who would do it.”
Behan plans to license the design to pharmaceutical companies – he won’t be manufacturing the bottles himself.
“They make the bottle on the premises where it is filled because it is cost prohibitive to ship empty ones, and they can make them in a clean room environment,” he said.
He said his experience with Innov8 for Health and the program’s director Sunnie Southern has contributed a lot to his success so far. Southern helped him refine his business plan for the dropper and connected him with people and companies around Cincinnati. Behan is based in Covington, KY, which is just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.
Behan has three patents pending, including the squeeze point for all bottles and the drop stop, which prevents the medicine from falling into the arch of the dropper.
He has raised one round of funding from friends and family. He does not plan to buy out the original investors but to share profits with them every year.
His goal for 2015 is a licensing deal with a pharmaceutical company, ideally one that manufactures ophthalmic medicines.
