If Charles Dickens were alive today and wrote for Medical Device Daily he might be inclined to use his familiar opening line of "A Tale of Two Cities" to describe the current state of the med-tech industry: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Scientists have known for years that heat dramatically increases the effectiveness of chemotherapy but the challenge has been figuring out how to selectively heat the cancer cells without also affecting healthy tissue. A couple years ago a group of entrepreneurs founded a company, Actium BioSystems (Boulder, Colorado), to take on this challenge and invent a selective-heating technology to combine the clinical benefits of heat (hyperthermia) and chemotherapy.

There has never been a shortage of negative news regarding the U.S. healthcare system, and for good reason. I could write a whole book on the subject, just based on my own bad healthcare experiences. But this is a mere 400-word blog, not a book, and I would rather spend it on a positive note. After suffering from painful digestive problems for far too long, and getting absolutely nowhere with local doctors, I finally...