My sister Pam is a nurse in a very cutting edge research hospital in Pittsburgh, PA.  We were talking the other days about the new and exciting things that she sees every day and several of us were asking her how many people it takes to bring something like a ground-breaking surgery together. She talked about the doctors and technicians and other care givers, but then mentioned a component that I had never considered.  She was telling us that without the research and efforts of the medical device manufacturing industry, many of these new and life saving concepts would never become reality.