One corner of health care — prosthetic hands — exhibits unfettered innovation, wild and manic, like the proliferation of web apps. The magic is that these hands lie just beyond the regulations that choke most of health care.
Before 2013, if your child was born without a hand, prosthetics capable of grasping a glass or riding a bike were expensive ($5,000 or more) or unavailable. Most children had to wait until late teens, as few families could afford to replace prosthetics every few months as children outgrew them. This meant growing up with a disability, plus the psychological pain of being the kid with the strange limb.
