To be honest, it was probably a dead-end tech that could've worked, but will probably not be developed because other approaches are kind of safer and worked on by more reputable scientists: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1711/1489... (this one is 38x40, and it's probably easier to get it higher res too :) )
But when it was first tested, it was what seemed to work best, but was abandoned because of the place it was developed in and the (lack of) scientific reputation of the person working on it. The thing with these kinds of things is that you need "proof by engineering and experiment", so if you don't throw money at them before knowing how well they work, you'll never know if they work at all... or you'll never have more than one working technology to choose from. The whole "fund just the best ideas" approach in medical engineering is disastrous imho because the problem space is so huge that you never know what might turn out to work and for what, and at the same time, you obviously can't just do "garage/basement experiments" on these kinds of things, so any equivalent of "wacky garage experiments" actually needs to be funded... this technology was a nice "exploration" of one way to solve a problem.
But when it was first tested, it was what seemed to work best, but was abandoned because of the place it was developed in and the (lack of) scientific reputation of the person working on it. The thing with these kinds of things is that you need "proof by engineering and experiment", so if you don't throw money at them before knowing how well they work, you'll never know if they work at all... or you'll never have more than one working technology to choose from. The whole "fund just the best ideas" approach in medical engineering is disastrous imho because the problem space is so huge that you never know what might turn out to work and for what, and at the same time, you obviously can't just do "garage/basement experiments" on these kinds of things, so any equivalent of "wacky garage experiments" actually needs to be funded... this technology was a nice "exploration" of one way to solve a problem.