Inventor
Frank Hursey is recognized for his invention of QuikClot, a hemostatic dressing designed to rapidly control bleeding. QuikClot Combat Gauze, impregnated with kaolin, is the hemostatic agent of choice recommended by the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care for the United States Armed Forces. It is widely used by hospital operating and emergency rooms, the military, EMS crews, law enforcement, and consumers. It has saved thousands of lives.
Frank Hursey is an American inventor and philanthropist. Hursey grew up in Dillon, South Carolina and moved to Connecticut at age 19. He began working at Pratt & Whitney on fuel cells for NASA’s Apollo program. Hursey worked as a hospital engineer specializing in respiratory machines, where he encountered zeolite, a mineral used to enrich oxygen by adsorbing nitrogen. In 1987, he founded On-Site Gas Systems, a company that produces oxygen and nitrogen generators. Hursey hypothesized that zeolite could be used to treat wounds by adsorbing water from blood while leaving clotting agents intact. He filed a patent in 1989 but struggled to market the product.
In 1999, Hursey partnered with entrepreneur Bart Gullong. Gullong and Hursey created a company called Z-Medica in 2002 to produce QuikClot. After the September 11 attacks, Gullong introduced QuikClot to the U.S. Navy and Marines, where it outperformed other hemostatic agents and was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002. The U.S. Army initially rejected QuikClot in favor of competing products. Hursey collaborated with mineral scientist Galen Stucky and the Office of Naval Research to develop an improved product using kaolin, which eliminated the exothermic burn reaction side effect with zeolite. In 2008, QuikClot was adopted across the U.S. military.
At the University of Hartford, the Francis X. and Nancy Hursey Center for Advanced Engineering and Health Professions opened in 2021. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Hartford after twelve years of night classes, followed by a master’s degree in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 2023, Hursey received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford. Hursey holds thirty-nine patents.