Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing, bonus story of the week.

Today on Forbes, how a high-tech chair could revolutionize cancer radiation therapy.

For decades, Stanford Healthcare has been trying to install a state-of-the-art proton therapy machine

to add to its array of high-tech cancer treatments. But try as it might,

it just couldn't find a place to put one. Proton therapy machines, which deliver targeted radiation

to cancerous tumors, are massive contraptions. They typically need a facility the size of a three-story

football field to accommodate them,

and build-out costs are similarly gargantuan, between $50 million and $100 million.

Even for a prestigious institution like Stanford, the hurdles to installation were daunting,

particularly given Palo Alto's pricey real estate and lack of space for such construction.

Stanford Professor of Radiation Oncology, Dr. Billy Lou, told Forbes, quote,

The closest that we came was several years ago when we worked out in arrangement with the Palo Alto VA hospital that is close to us. The approvals went all the way up to the top of the VA administration

in Washington, but as the project proceeded month by month, the cost estimates escalated. It became

totally infeasible. Three years ago, Stanford found an alternative. Startup, Leo Cancer Care

had developed a variation on the standard proton therapy machine design.

Instead of rotating the radiation beam around a patient lying flat in a bed,

it designed a chair in which a seated patient rotated around the beam.

That seemingly simple change had transformative consequences.

It helped trim the space required to about 1,700 square feet from the more than 29,000 square feet,

a more than 90% reduction.

That made it significantly less expensive and easier to fit where they wanted it,

even with the extensive radiation shielding proton therapy machines

...