The multidisciplinary approach to develop artificial organs

This paper presents the author's perspective of how artificial organ development has evolved in the past 35 years into a multidisciplinary effort. Examples are taken from the fields of hemodialysis, oxygenators, and affinity immunoadsorption devices. Development of the multidisciplinary approach to develop dialysis and oxygenation membranes has been significantly advanced by private and governmental collaboration and conferences that gathered together chemists, physicians, engineers, and fluid dynamics experts. Lengthy delays occurred in artificial organ development when such interdisciplinary collaborations did not take place.