BusinessWeek has a nice write up on Medtronic's SynchroMed II drug infusion system and PDA based Personal Therapy Manager (PTM). (You can read a previous post on PTM here.) The story also touches on competitors Advanced Neuromodulation Systems' Eon, and Cyberonics' VNS. And includes some pricing info:
The PTM doesn't come cheap. Implanting a SynchroMed II
system averages about $25,000 to $50,000, and an additional PTM
handheld costs $2,000. And [Tom] Valine [senior product manager at Medtronic] says "insurance reimbursement is
lagging." The expense can exceed the total cost of neurostimulation
implant therapy. Medtronic's Synergy system costs about $25,000, for
example, and Advanced Neuromodulation Systems' Eon system ranges from
$20,000 to $24,000.
But with U.S. companies losing an estimated
$62 billion in annual productivity due to pain-related illnesses,
according to the most recent study on the economic implications of pain
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the need is clear.
Eventually, Medtronic expects devices like the PTM to become software that runs on cell phones or general purpose PDAs.
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