Jason Koger came too close to a downed power line while riding his four-wheeler in 2008. The resulting accident robbed Koger of both hands. Five years later, Koger has become the first double hand amputee to be fitted with prosthetic replacements that can be controlled with a mobile app. Unlike the conventional prosthetics doctors have long relied on to this point, which are limited to simple tasks, the new hands — designed by Touch Bionics — contain individual motors that grant unique movement to each finger. Using the mobile application, Koger can choose one of 24 grip patterns (picking up a pen, clicking a mouse, etc.) and even customize grips on-demand for other situations. The machined hands contain a "skin" layer that lets them easily interact with an iPhone's capacitive display.

Most important to Koger, though, the breakthrough solution has brought another benefit: he's able to grasp his daughter's hand for the first time in a half decade. "It gives me the ability to do more things that I want to do," he told CNN's Sanjay Gupta. "A lot of things you take for granted in life," "it's definitely interesting how you can do the small things instead of asking somebody else to do it for me."