I'll suggest that you are looking at the cost to you or your insurer after several markups.
Fully-burdened, 1990 costs for a dual-chamber IPG ran ca $120. Two leads at about $150 ea, depending on electrode material (more if a biological sensor parameter were included.) Then add literature, sterile packaging, etc. The cost for the system to a clinic/hospital was ca $5k.
The final cost to a patient for the system - including cath lab/OR and physicians’ fees, was typically $15k.
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R&D development times often exceeded 2 years involving teams of 20-30 people. Then came FDA submissions and clinical trials - typically another 12 to 18 months waiting for ‘approval’
There is considerably more than cell-phone technology inside these devices. Nor is the battery chemistry trivial.
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And as usual, I'll ‘hang up’ and ignore the posts from the hams who tell me how they really work! Freep-mail me and I can recommend a decent book describing the industry as it was through about 2000.
I don’t consider anything about my ICD trivial. It has saved my life several times over the years from VT brought on by HCM. The ICD programming, along with medication and a couple of ablations has even reversed a lot of my HCM, so my VT is basically non-existent now.
I was only making the point that it is the size of a cell phone, with a lot of the same programming and hardware. The big difference is the battery though and the titanium case. The $75K was just for the device. The surgery to implant it was another $100K. Hard to believe it cost them more than $2K or $3K to produce. I hope they don’t look to outsourcing these devices because of decreasing revenue, due to their own mistakes and increased government involvement.