There is a significant difference between computer and medical R&D. Computers don't have to be tested by thousands of customers before they can be sold to the general public, while every medical advance must be extensively tested. In the case of drugs and medical devices, the testing involves thousands of patients for several years before it can even be considered for the FDA approval. Any but the most trivial change in a medical device means it must be tested and approved by the FDA all over again. The cost of medical research is high, and that is a cost that cannot be disregarded in the cost of the final product. Computers are very amenable to mass production technology, which is great for bringing down prices. Other than the most simple procedures (like vaccination), I can't think of too much medicine that can be delivered on an assembly line.
I worked for a small pharmaceutical company as a payroll and accounts payable manager back in the late ‘90s, early 2000’s. Long before a drug can even go to “clinical trials” and tested on people in a controlled setting, it takes many years and from what I saw, millions and millions of dollars and man hours spent on bio-chem research in the lab and then on to animal testing, with FDA applications made at several intervals. I saw the invoices and it was not unusual for my department to have check runs in the millions on a weekly basis, some of the outsourced animal testing invoices alone could be several hundreds of thousands of dollars just for one study.
And sometimes a new drug never makes it out of the lab or out of animal studies yet it still costs millions of dollars. Seeing firsthand the costs involved, I never again questioned why many prescription drugs are so expensive.
The company I worked for successfully developed a very specialized drug for Glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive and malignant type of brain tumor. They also developed a fast acting surgical anesthetic with fewer side effects than others in use. But along the way it cost a whole lot of money to get those drugs through the FDA approval process and into the hands of doctors and into patients, the clinical trials and follow up being also very expensive and there were many, many drugs that never went anywhere, never got out of the lab. Even with their successes, they eventually ran out of cash and the company was bought out by a larger pharma. I’ve heard it said that it takes at least 10 years for an upstart pharmaceutical to turn a profit.
And the manufacturing process for drugs is also very expensive; the clean rooms and highly specialized equipment involved, not to mention the quality control and specialized and highly trained and highly paid people needed. You just don’t put an ad in the local paper for “assembly line” or minimum wage workers in pharma manufacturing.