There are two problems with this lifetime and power supply in that order. The first is that the lifetime was only 3000 beats, which at 40 beats a minute transla

There are two problems with this lifetime and power supply in that order. The first is that the lifetime was only 3000 beats, which at 40 beats a minute translates to about an hour and a half of use. In comparison, the jarvik 7, one of the first artificial hearts was used in a patient for 620 days[0], which at 40 beats per minute translates to about 36 million beats. In my opinion, I think it will be very difficult to modify this heart to last this long, especially if it experiences significant elastic deformation. To get this significant elastic deformation we need soft materials like elastomers, which don't tend to have very good fatigue properties under significant elastic deformation. The authors even admit that "this issue is a game breaker and needs to be resolved."[1] Developing elastomers that can withstand the number of cycles is quite challenging. This heart is pneumatically powered, so the patient needs to have tubes going through the skin connecting to a pneumatic power supply. These can be bulky, they can be portable, but still somewhat bulky[2]. For something that keeping you alive, this may not matter too much if the benefits of using the device are sufficient. Although I'm not really clear on what the benefits of using this are(I must admit I am not an expert in artificial hearts). One big claimed advantage is that they may reduce the dead spots in the heart. Dead spots are regions of low fluid flow, these are bad, because they can cause clots to form. Some artificial hearts deal with this now by having the patient take anticoagulants, so reducing them is a pretty big deal. But they have not demonstrated this. Although this is pretty difficult to do, they'd have to find a way to make the heart transparent to see the fluid flow inside. [0]http://www.texasheart.org/Research/Devices/j7tah.cfm http://www.texasheart.org/Research/Devices/j7tah.cfm [1]http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aor.12956/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aor.12956/abstrac... [2]http://www.pneumatictips.com/miniaturization-makes-pneumatics-choice-medical-applications/ http://www.pneumatictips.com/miniaturization-makes-pneumatic...