For decades, replacing a failing human heart meant waiting—often desperately—for a donor. But in a hospital in Sydney, that paradigm has begun to shift. Last November, surgeons at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney implanted the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart in a critically ill patient.

A man has lived for more than 100 days with an artificial maglev heart working inside his chest. In a landmark moment, he was discharged earlier this year, becoming the first person in the world to leave the hospital with the device embedded in his body.

The titanium device’s underlying principles were first envisioned in 2001 by a biomedical engineer named Daniel Timms. Timms, a plumber’s son, started by mimicking a human circulatory system using hardware store pipes and valves,