Do they work in borosilicate or in softer glasses? Can their products take a vacuum? Multiple atmospheres? Cryogenic liquids? Have they done glass/tungsten connections? Threads? Can they silver glass? What experience do they have with a glassblowing lathe? Milling using diamond tooling? CNC waterjet cutter?
That said, they would clearly have to do a lot of learning and training for the more specific scientific applications, and since many artists get thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars per piece, I'm sure you'd have a hard time luring them away. On top of that, they probably couldn't be stoned all day and would go from making art to making whatever functional objects are needed.
Well, that shows I know more about scientific glass than recreational and medical.
Still, lightlyused referred to "several glass blowers in that community" who lightlyused personally knew. My comment was in response to that. I seriously doubt that those are the ones who make high end pieces.
Bong making is not hard. It's one of the things that chemistry undergrads often do if they take a glass blowing class and the staff lets them get away with it. (Sometimes the lab teacher will even anneal your 'project'.)
I can be good enough at carpentry to make bookshelves for me and my friends. That doesn't mean I can build a good staircase.
Similarly, it would be hard to lure me away to, say, a job developing cloud computing infrastructure.
Ask the blowers in that community if they could make the pieces shown at http://www.ilpi.com/glassblowing/glassblowing.html .
There's a reason it takes years to master scientific glassblowing.
I've done a lot of programming, but I'm the wrong person to talk to if you want an operating system or mobile app.