Nowadays, biomedical engineering has become a profession in itself. But some of the earliest and most groundbreaking innovations were made by do it yourselfers such as Medtronic co-founder Earl Bakken, an electrical engineer who created the first battery-operated pacemaker in 1957, or Thomas Fogarty, MD, the vascular surgeon who developed the first embolectomy catheter in the 1960s. Their passion and desire to impact, for better,people’s lives overcame their lack of formal engineering training. The do-it-yourself tradition actually lives onn. Read on to find out more about the medical device field’s do it yourself tradition, both past and present.