From ER nuisance to NasaClip: How a Maryland doctor turned nosebleeds into a medtech startup

Elizabeth Clayborne’s frustration with how nosebleeds are treated offers a case study in how an ecosystem can turn lived experience into market-ready innovation. 

• ER physician Elizabeth Clayborne questioned why nosebleeds were still treated with improvised tools, and turned that insight into NasaClip, now FDA-registered and on the market.
• After years on the back burner, the company accelerated during the pandemic with support from TEDCO, which has now invested multiple times, most recently with $250K in seed funding.
• Clayborne is already exploring broader uses for the device, including drug delivery like Narcan, highlighting how Maryland’s medtech infrastructure helps ideas grow beyond their first use case.

Elizabeth Clayborne likes to tell the story of a question her young daughter once asked her: “Mom, can boys be doctors?”

Clayborne smiled when she recounted it inside the glassy, second-floor 4MLK event space at the University of Maryland BioPark, but the moment carried weight. Her daughter wasn’t making a joke, she’d simply grown up surrounded by confident women physicians and assumed medicine belonged to them. In reality, women make up 38% of active medical doctors today, though the share is growing fast.

Clayborne took the question as a reminder of what generational progress looks like in real time: each wave of Maryland scientists and clinicians normalizing what the next one believes possible.

Read the full story from Technical.ly.