I find myself consistently in awe of the accomplishments that engineers working on implantable medical devices manage to yield. This is not only because of the

I find myself consistently in awe of the accomplishments that engineers working on implantable medical devices manage to yield. This is not only because of the remarkable impact that these devices often have on a patient's quality of life, but also because of the seemingly insurmountable number of hurdles that must be overcome to bring a functional product to market. For moral and regulatory reasons, these engineers cannot depend on large trial groups, the ability to rapidly iterate designs, run A/B trials, or exact much control over the quality and consistency of their sample subjects. And to top it all off, the nuances of human body systems are still very much 'black boxes' (in spite of our considerable and rapid advances in the field). From a business perspective, many of these efforts are viewed as nearly untouchable due to the levels of risk involved. Yet, things like the artificial hearts mentioned in this article still manage to get developed. They're not perfect, but they're damn impressive.