For more than two decades, John Steinbaugh served as a Special Forces medic in the Army, and now he’s reinvented himself as an inventor.
Steinbaugh is the man behind the company RevMedx, which is developing new technologies to keep soldiers wounded at war alive. Back in February, NationSwell reported that the company’s first invention, XStat, was awaiting FDA approval, a hurdle it cleared in April. Now, RevMedx is gearing up to supply XStat to the military, plus developing additional technologies.
Steinbaugh’s innovation grew out of his observation that people have been using gauze to staunch bleeding for centuries, but the material doesn’t work well for wounds on certain parts of the body, such as the armpit and pelvis.
Steinbaugh tells Cat Wise of the PBS NewsHour, “Back in 2006-2007, at the height of the war, medics were getting fed up with the standard gauze. And we started seeing wounds that were much worse than what we were seeing at the beginning of the war. Medics were having more difficulties stopping the bleeding. And the way the medics described the device they wanted was fix-a-flat. So if you think of your tire, you inject the fix-a-flat into your tire, it finds the escaping air, it plugs it, and done.”
Steinbaugh couldn’t provide Army medics with fix-a-flat for people, but the product inspired his idea for a syringe loaded with tiny, compressed sponges that instantly expand when inserted into a wound, thereby stopping the bleeding. When Steinbaugh retired from the military he started RevMedx in Portland, Ore., and a $5 million grant from the Army sustained the company during the three years needed to develop XStat.
The sponges in an XStat are coated with blood-clotting medicine and expand 15 times their original size — applying pressure to the wound and stopping arterial bleeding within 20 seconds, according to testing the company has done. Additionally, each sponge includes markers detectable by X-ray so that surgeons can easily locate and remove them.
The company has starting shipping XStat to the military and is already modifying the idea for civilian applications, as well as developing a gauze with XStat sponges inside: XGauze.
Steinbaugh says, “Ever since the first day we started working on this, there’s been an immediate interest for other types of products, smaller shrapnel wounds, or small-caliber pistol wounds, and even in the civilian community, like law enforcement, or prison knife wounds and stabbings.”
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Tag: Inventions
Can Nail Polish Prevent Date Rape?
As young adults across the country head to college this month, they might be worried about more than just getting to class on time. That’s because the Washington Post analyzed the most recent federal campus crime data available and found over 3,900 reports of sexual assaults on American college campuses in 2012. These statistics, coupled with the probability that such crimes are massively underreported, are disturbing, to say the least.
But four North Carolina State University students are developing an innovative product that might bring some peace of mind: a nail polish that changes color when it detects the presence of the date rape drugs, such as Xanax, Rohypnol or GHB in a drink.
How does it work? If the wearer uses her (or his) finger to stir their drink, the polish will change color if any of these drugs are present.
The team of invetors, which consists of Tyler Confrey-Maloney, Stephen Gray, Ankesh Madan and Tasso Von Windheim, are currently raising funds for research and development of the nail polish. According to Lauren K. Ohnesorge of the Triangle Business Journal, a securities filing indicates that they’ve already raised $100,000 from one investor, with the goal of ultimately collecting $250,000.
Back in April, these students won the Lulu eGames, which is sponsored by NC State’s Entrepreneurship Initiative, with their invention. Next they applied to present their startup idea at this fall’s Kairos Global Summit, and earlier this month, made it to the semi-finals.
The young entrepreneurs are keeping mum about when their product will be available, but the idea has already generated widespread interest.
Other products already exist for detecting date rape drugs, including Drink Safe’s testing coasters, and the pd.id, a battery-powered gadget that indicates the presence of drugs when immersed in a beverage, but none of them have the ease of use as nail polish. After all, if it works, Undercover Colors has the advantage of offering users one less thing to carry. Plus, since the polish is invisible, it will likely deter would-be attackers from even trying to spike someone’s drinks since they wouldn’t know who might be wearing it.
As the inventors behind Undercover Colors write on their Facebook page, “In the U.S., 18% of women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. We may not know who they are, but these women are not faceless. They are our daughters, they are our girlfriends, and they are our friends. While date rape drugs are often used to facilitate sexual assault, very little science exists for their detection. Our goal is to invent technologies that empower women to protect themselves from this heinous and quietly pervasive crime.”
MORE: The Innovative Blood-Drawing Technique That’s Pain-Free and Saves Money
The Innovative Blood-Drawing Technique That’s Pain-Free and Saves Money
Most 19 year olds spend their days hanging out with friends, not revolutionizing American healthcare. But that’s not the case with Elizabeth Holmes who dropped out of Stanford to start the company, Theranos.
During her freshman year in college, Holmes took chemical engineering professor Channing Robertson’s seminar on advanced drug-delivery devices (aka, things like patches and pills). After completing a summer internship at the Genome Institute in Singapore, she hit upon her first idea: a patch that simultaneously delivered medication and collected data about the patient to inform their doctors with.
Holmes dropped out of school to work on a patent for that product and to launch her company using the rest of her college savings.
That invention was the first of many that the now 30-year-old CEO would develop. According to Fortune, Holmes is listed as a co-inventor on 82 U.S. and 189 foreign patent applications. Eighteen in the U.S. have been granted.
When Holmes first told Robertson about her plan to drop out, Robertson told Fortune, “I said, ‘Why do you want to do this?’ And she said, ‘Because systems like this could completely revolutionize how effective health care is delivered. And this is what I want to do. I don’t want to make an incremental change in some technology in my life. I want to create a whole new technology, and one that is aimed at helping humanity at all levels regardless of geography or ethnicity or age or gender.'”
As Holmes set to work on her company, she shifted from her initial idea to one about developing a revolutionary way to run diagnostic tests on very small amounts of blood — just a drop — instead of the full vials most labs need.
She came up with a technique that not only minimizes the discomfort, but also enables doctors to run dozens of tests on just one sample — and it delivers the results efficiently and inexpensively. They’re so affordable, in fact, that no test costs more than half of the allowed Medicare reimbursement for it. Fortune writer Roger Parloff says, “with widespread adoption [this] could save the nation billions.”
And that’s just part of Holmes’s next plan for Theranos. The company is partnering with Walgreens, whose stores currently host 21 patented Theranos blood-drawing facilities. They’re all in Phoenix and Palo Alto for now, but the drug-store chain plans to gradually add them nationwide. Holmes’s eventual goal? For just about every American to have a Theranos facility within five miles.
In addition to the cost savings and the minimized discomfort, Holmes’ technique allows for more frequent blood draws in people with conditions that require it, so that doctors can better monitor the fluctuations in their health.
Holmes said, “Anywhere from 40 percent to 60 percent of people, when they’re given a requisition by a doctor to go get tested, don’t, because they’re scared of needles or the locations are inconvenient or the cost is too high. And if you’re not even getting tested, how is it possible that we’re going to move toward an era of preventive medicine?”
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This Student-Invented Device Eliminates Almost All of the Emissions from a Very Common Household Polluter
Without a doubt, the only thing that’s green about lawns is its color.
We’ve already gone on a long tirade about this expensive and resource-intensive crop, but did you know that simply mowing your grass once a week comes at a hefty environmental price?
Here’s why: The typical gasoline-powered lawnmower is a huge, filthy polluter. The EPA estimates that in a single hour, these mowers emit 11 times the air pollution of a new car that’s driven in the same amount of time. That’s something that the planet — and our lungs — shouldn’t have to go through just for a nice patch of green. (Unless you own an electric mower, of course!)
That’s where NOx-Out comes in. It’s a one-of-a-kind device from the student engineers at the University of California-Riverside (UCR). By fitting this L-shaped pipe over a regular mower’s muffler, it significantly cuts emissions from lawnmowers more than 90 percent. According to a UCR press release, when an earlier version of the NOx-Out was tested, it cut carbon monoxide by 87 percent; nitrogen oxides by 67 percent and particulate matter by 44 percent. In the current version, 93 percent of particulate matter emissions were eliminated.
The device, which won a huge grant from the EPA’s P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet) competition, works in a three-step process, UCR says. “First, a glass quartz filter captures particulate matter. Then an ultra-fine spray of urea solution is dispersed into the exhaust stream. The urea spray primes the dirty air for the final stage, when a catalyst converts the harmful nitrogen oxide and ammonia into harmless nitrogen gas and water and releases them into the air.”
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The idea for the NOx-Out came from team member Rosalva Chavez, a UCR environmental engineering student. Chavez suspected that her janitor father, who earned extra money mowing lawns over the weekend, had developed coughing and asthma due to his exposure to emissions via gasoline-powered lawn equipment.
The best news about this story? As TreeHugger found, the UCR campus will be using these devices on their own lawns, and eventually, the entire University of California system could benefit from cleaner air, thanks to the NOx-Out.
UCR says that team is also thinking about commercializing the product once it’s further refined — selling for about $30 each. When 80 percent of Americans live in a home with a lawn, that’s a small price to pay to help out the planet.
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DON’T MISS: A Roof That Can Clean the Air?
Watch: A Young Girl’s Inspirational Invention and Four Other Stories That Inspired Us in June
When 11-year-old Lily Born noticed her grandfather’s Parkinson’s Disease was causing him a lot of hand tremors, she snapped into action, creating a three-legged ceramic cup that is more durable and less likely to flip over. Watch her brilliant invention and four other videos about the people, ideas and solutions that moved and motivated us in June.
Watch the full videos here:
When This Grandpa Had Trouble Holding a Glass, His Granddaughter Put on Her Inventor’s Cap
Why Does This School Let Its Students Record Hip-Hop Tracks?
This Janitor’s School Family Gifts Him Money to Visit His Family Overseas
These Wheels Help Those Paralyzed Travel Over More Than Just Hills, Dells, and Dusty Trails
How One Man is Saving His Community, One Child at a Time
An Inventor to Help Other Inventors
If you’ve ever been struck with a million-dollar idea, you’re probably not alone. Most of us have likely had that burst of thought—but pushed it aside given the difficulty of transforming an idea into an actual product or service. After all, where would you begin?
Enter Inventalator, a new online web platform dedicated to helping inventors turn their ideas into physical products. The Milwaukee-based company was developed by Cody Skonard, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Skonard started the company with the intention to combine all phases of the invention process into one website, as well as enable inventors to form connections and receive feedback from the consumers to improve their idea.
The process is simple: Inventors first submit their ideas onto the website. From there, site users vote on the inventions based on whether they would buy the product or not. If a product receives 50 votes within a month, it is moved to the Inventalator “engine.” In this area, the site users and inventors are able to interact with one another. Users also offer suggestions and improvements on the product so it can be more appealing to the general public. Finally, when the product is ready to be developed, Inventalator connects the inventor with manufacturers, product licensors and distributors, getting them contracts as well.
Inventalator is not the only site for inventors but it has two distinguishing characteristics. First, it’s a “market intelligence platform,” meaning that instead of producing the product itself, it supplies inventors with all of the resources to develop the product. It is a one-stop site for the inventor’s needs. Second, the inventor keeps the property rights.
Although the inventor keeps the property rights, the service is not free. There’s a $10 initial fee to submit an idea as well as a 1-2% fee for site transactions and a 3-5% commission fee for crowdfunding campaigns.
In addition, Skonard is currently working on developing a production software tool. The program would work like a fake stock market where site users can invest fake money in answers to inventors’ questions. Like the stock market, the user can cash out when it wants and earn rewards for the site.
So far, Inventalator has been active for three months and has amassed 275 users. By connecting inventors with consumers, Inventalator has streamlined the process and made the inventions more accessible to both parties. With little to lose, it might be time to submit that idea—after all, it could be the next great American invention.
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A Roof That Can Clean the Air?
Now talk about something that smog-filled Southern California could really use.
Students at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering have developed an insanely cheap and simple solution to air pollution.
According to UCR Today, the team created an experimental coating that, when applied to your average clay tile, can remove between 88 to 97 percent of smog-causing nitrogen oxides.
The coating is made of titanium dioxide — a very common product found in paint, sunscreen and even some candy — that breaks down nitrogen oxides found in air pollution. Remarkably (since the product is made of such an ordinary compound) the students say that it would only cost $5 to coat the average residential roof.
ALSO: These Two Students Developed an Incredibly Cheap Solution to a Common Disability
Crunching the numbers, the young researchers figured that if the coating were applied to a single roof, it would gobble up the same amount of nitrogen oxide in one year that’s produced by a car driving 11,000 miles. Apply these tiles to a million homes, and they would eliminate 21 tons of nitrogen oxides every day — about 4 percent of the 500 tons of nitrogen oxide emitted each day in Southern California.
That’s not too shabby of a return on a few bucks.
The coating inventors, who are all set to graduate, hope to see their project taken on by a new team of students for testing in the real world. Besides rooftops, these ambitious college seniors want to see their creation applied on concrete and freeway walls or dividers to curb another big SoCal problem: Traffic pollution.
DON’T MISS: These High Schoolers Solved a Foodie Problem With a 3-D Printer
These High Schoolers Solved a Foodie Problem With a 3-D Printer
If you’ve ever had the unpleasant experience of squeezing out watery ketchup all over your hotdog, two high school students in Liberty, Missouri, have come up with just the invention you need.
Condiment experts Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson, both seniors studying in the Project Lead the Way Program (PLTW) at North Liberty High School, were challenged by their teacher, Brett Kisker, to come up with a solution to a problem that was relevant to them. “We always start with the phrase, ‘it really bugs me when,'” Kisker told Lindsey Foat of the Hale Center for Journalism at KCPT. (PLTW is a nonprofit that provides instruction and training in science and technology to students from kindergarten to high school, in the form of after-school programs and in-class lessons for teachers.)
What could be more relevant to a teenager than the perfect ketchup experience?
Kisker challenged their idea initially. “I said that they could just shake the bottle and that there is a free solution,” Kisker told Foat. “But they did a lot of research and they had me convinced that this problem really does exist.” The two teens found that many people would be willing to pay a little extra to have the watery ketchup problem solved. Additionally, a ketchup dispenser that doesn’t need to be shaken could help seniors and people with disabilities alike.
The students began their project by researching what patents had already been issued for ketchup inventions. “There are a surprising amount of ketchup-related patents out there,” Richards told Foat. “There was one — it’s kind of hard to explain — but basically it’s a way to inject ketchup into a french fry. It was a bit extreme.”
Next the students brainstormed, coming up with 60 possible solutions. The one they settled on is shaped like a mushroom and inserted into the underside of the ketchup cap. “It is based on the Pythagorean cup idea,” Thompson told Foat. “It’s also the same principle that toilets work off of.” They built their prototype using a 3-D printer and showed it at an exhibition of PLTW experiments in Kansas City.
The two don’t have any immediate plans to turn their ketchup idea into a business, however. Thompson has enlisted in the Army, and Richards will start at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in August. But whatever they do, their time spent as inventors probably means that they’ll never look at a bottle of ketchup the same way again.
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Forget About Mousetraps. Can We Build a Better Toilet?
Some everyday objects are so basic that you might think they couldn’t be improved upon. Like, for example, the humble toilet.
But The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is betting that scientists can build a better toilet. In 2012, the foundation chose 16 teams to participate in its “Reinventing the Toilet Challenge,” gave them $777,000 in grant money, and sent them off to reinvent the toilet.
One of the hopefuls is a group from the University of Colorado (CU), led by environmental engineering professor Karl Linden. Their innovation? A solar-powered potty. Now, their toilet is ready for its world debut: the team shipped a functional prototype to New Delhi, India, where it will appear in the second annual Reinvent the Toilet Fair on March 22.
Linden told Elizabeth Hernandez of the Boulder Daily Camera that his team’s toilet uses solar energy to convert solid waste into “a sanitary, harmless charcoal-like material that can be used for heating or fertilizing.” Meanwhile, a “urine diverting” feature heats the feces to a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius, killing any potential pathogens and making the resulting fertilizer safe for use. “Obviously, people at fairgrounds don’t want real feces present, so we’re going to make synthetic waste products,” Linden told Hernandez.
If the CU team’s work is judged a success at the fair, they will gain additional funding that will allow them to improve the cost-effectiveness of their design and cope with the problem of generating solar power on cloudy days. “It’s a pretty incredible experience to be able to actually build something that’s physically real because a lot of the work we do in the lab is studying concepts and theories and advancing science that way,” Linden said. And if the team’s toilet lives up to its promise, it’s definitely an innovation that shouldn’t be flushed down the drain.
MORE:How San Francisco Got Its Residents to Care About Sewers
Watch a Month’s Worth of Inspiration in 2 Minutes
With a Lego kit, a thumbtack and a few supplies from Home Depot, 12-year-old Shubham Banerjee built a budget-friendly Braille printer to help the visually impaired read. Watch this and four other amazing videos that inspired us in this month.