I realize that there are huge costs for those companies that manufacture medical equipment in the first place, especially in R&D activities. However, what determines a different price between, for example, an MRI machine (that can cost $3 million) and a Mammography machine (around $50k)?
These prices come from a quick Google search and may, therefore, have to be contextualized.
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Other reasons are size and complexity. A mammogram machine is “just” a basic xray machine, whereas an mri machine must be large enough for a patient to fit into the torus and the huge mass of spinning sensors needs to be cooled with cryogenic fluid. The mri room must also be built with special shielding and nonferrous materials due to the magnetic fields produced during the scans.
Hospital equipment is also designed to be safe and not cause harm to human life. Equipment power supplies and batteries are tested and certified to not catch fire while charging, must be tested regularly to ensure they haven’t degraded and will cause a hazard to hospital staff and patients. The equipment also has other safety features like low smoke emited by burning plastics, no sparks that could ignite oxygen being use by patients, design requirements like no crevices or gaps to trap pathogens or contaminants, etc.
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