Brief summaries of recent medtech market and industry developments. This month we cover highlights from the Heart Failure Society of America meeting, China's streamlined regulatory requirements for imported medical devices, and the FDA's positive panel recommendation for J&J's AF ablation catheter.

After years of steady single-digit growth, the cardiac rhythm management market was jump-started this decade by the expansion of implantable cardioverter defibrillators and the development of cardiac resynchronization therapy devices. Those products drove annual growth rates above 20%. But in 2005, this growth came to a screeching halt due to product recalls and other safety issues. To address these concerns, CRM manufacturers are working with the FDA and the Heart Rhythm Society to restore the trust of both implanting physicians and the patient community.

The first chapter of natural orifice surgery begins with the Apollo Group, a group of world-renowned gastroenterologists and surgeons who were frustrated with the pace of innovation in gastroenterology. They believed that there ought to be a better way to take advantage of the natural orifice access and the flexible endoscopy platforms with which they were familiar, to do more interventional procedures. The efforts of the group resulted in a pooled set of intellectual property, which became the basis of start-up Apollo Endosurgery. Apollo aims to provide surgical instrumentation designed specifically for NOTES, to help the field learn just how far minimally invasive surgery can go.