Miracle sponge: New invention can plug gunshot wounds in seconds
The U.S. military had asked the medical technology company to come up with a solution for stopping gunshot and shrapnel wounds from bleeding out. The working idea was a medical version of Fix-a-Flat, the foam you squirt in punctured tires to plug up a hole. (Perhaps the military had been browsing at Pep Boys.)
Instead, it was a sponge that solved the problem, says Andrew Barofsky, RevMedx’s CEO.
“One of the co-founders of the company, Dr. Ken Gregory, was shopping at a Williams-Sonoma and discovered this kitchen sponge that was dried and compressed. You’d bring it home, splash water under it, and it would pop up into a normal-sized kitchen sponge,” he recalls.
“That was kind of a lightbulb moment.”