A groundbreaking artificial heart has made an Australian man a medical marvel. According to his doctors, he has become the first person worldwide to be discharged from the hospital with an implant designed to completely replace the heart’s functioning, as reported this week.

In November last year, doctors at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney performed the experimental procedure, implanting the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart in a man suffering from severe heart failure. Although he wasn’t the first person to receive this technology, he was the first to live with it long enough to be released from the hospital, exceeding 100 days. The implant served as a bridge to a typical heart transplant, which he received earlier this March.

Currently, there are implants that can perform some functions of a failing heart, but the BiVACOR heart, invented by Australian biomedical engineer Daniel Timms, is designed to fully take over the heart’s many critical functions. It is intended for people with end-stage heart failure and comes with an external rechargeable battery that connects to the heart through a wire, lasting four hours at a time. The developers hope that future iterations can be upgraded to a more convenient wireless charger.

The implant has reached early clinical trials, with the sixth and most current patient being a man in his 40s from New South Wales. The previous five patients in the U.S. only had the implant for a brief period before receiving heart transplants, not long enough to be discharged from their hospital stay. Thus, the man’s discharge and his 100-plus days of survival with the implant are both record-breaking achievements. He is now recovering well from his heart transplant performed earlier this month, according to his doctors.

“We’ve worked towards this moment for years, and we’re enormously proud to have been the first team in Australia to carry out this procedure,” said Paul Jansz, a cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon at St Vincent’s, in an interview with The Guardian.

While the BiVACOR heart is currently being tested as a treatment to extend the survival of patients until they can get a donor heart, Timms and his colleagues hope it can become a long-lasting replacement for the heart and a suitable alternative to heart transplantation. This goal is ambitious, considering patients live for a median 12 to 13 years after getting a donated heart. However, the early progress is certainly encouraging, with more patients expected to receive their own implants this year through a program led by researchers at Monash University in Australia.

“The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart ushers in a whole new ball game for heart transplants, both in Australia and internationally,” Chris Hayward, a cardiologist at St Vincent’s who monitored the man’s health, told The Guardian. “Within the next decade, we will see the artificial heart becoming the alternative for patients who are unable to wait for a donor heart or when a donor heart is simply not available.”

Artificial implants like the BiVACOR heart aren’t the only emerging technology that could one day support or supplant the limited supply of donor organs. Elsewhere, scientists are working on developing genetically modified pig organs that can be safely tolerated by the human body.