Blackhawk Integrated Tourniquet System (ITS) battlefield pants and shirts have built-in tourniquets. Pants that could actually save your life. And you thought keyboard pants were cool.
(Blackhawk ITS video)
As the company explains "ITS was developed to address the number one cause of battlefield death today - extremity hemorrhage."
“The Integrated Tourniquet System (I.T.S.™) was the brainchild of Dr. Keith Rose. Dr. Rose, a tactical medicine consultant for Blackhawk’s Special Operations Division, was in the military for several years on a forward surgical team and has extensive field experience in trauma and burns. He is currently working with humanitarian groups worldwide and worked directly with Blackhawk!’s R&D team to make sure that the system met real world requirements, and was also consistent with the medical training doctrine typically used by Military, Law Enforcement and the Civilian communities,” elaborated Eric Yeates, Director of Blackhawk’s R&D. “Blackhawk’s Injection Molding Team collaborated on the patent pending design of the Tourniquet System.
This reminds me of the bio-fabric from J.G. Ballard's Vermillion Sands stories. The fabric would sense the requirements of the wearer and transform itself to meet his or her needs.
Update 07-Nov-2008: A better example would be the powered suit with trauma maintenance from Joe Haldeman's Hugo- and Nebula-award winning 1974 novel The Forever War:
"The suit is set up to save as much of your body as possible. If you lose part of an arm or a leg, one of sixteen razor-sharp irises closes around your limb with the force of a hydraulic press, snipping it off neatly and sealing the suit before you can die of explosive decompression..."
(Read more about Haldeman's trauma maintenance powered suit)
End update.
From Blackhawk via MedGadget. And special thanks to Yossi for pointing out a great reference (that I already had!).
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/6/2008)
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