Technology, pricing details on biomed battery

After writing the PowerSource blog post last week about EaglePicher’s new catheter-implantable Micro Battery, I spoke with Grant Farrell, VP & General Manager of EaglePicher Medical Power, who answered my questions about the battery and its technology.

The battery is indeed a lithium derivative: lithium manganese dioxide, or LiMNO2. Its energy capacity is 2.5 mA-H, extraordinarily high for a battery that’s about the size of a large grain of rice. The pricing is on par with other biomed batteries: In the $200 range. Some parts of the manufacturing process, most notably test, are customized, depending on the end application.

Farrell mentioned the Micro Battery was a primary, or nonrechargeable battery. His mentioning it surprised me because I just assumed that implantable batteries were nonrechargeable – after all, if you remove the battery from your patient to recharge it, you might as well put in a new one, since at that point you’re not interested in saving the cost of a new battery. But Farrell explained that rechargeable, implantable batteries can be recharged in situ with inductively-coupled recharging systems. More on that in a future post.