Interactive pathway diagram: choose the ear, kidney or heart, switch between healthy, disorder and device states, and change the device setting to see what the pathway recovers and what it cannot match.
Most assistive devices repair nothing: they route around one broken step.
A cochlear implant, a dialysis machine and a pacemaker leave the damaged tissue exactly as it is. Each finds the one stage of a pathway that has stopped working and either bypasses it into healthy tissue downstream or does its job outside the body. Choose an organ, move from healthy to disorder to device, then change the device setting and watch what the trace below the pathway recovers and what it still cannot match.
Pathway and deviceEAR · HEALTHY
Choose an organ. Step from healthy to disorder to device. Then change the device setting and watch the trace under the pathway.
Organ
State of the pathway
Hair cells intact → fine pitch
Electrode channels22
Step that fails
None
Device supplies
Not needed
How the device helps
Know This
Judge every device by the step it replaces, the native tissue it still depends on, and the function it cannot match.