By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

EaglePicher Technologies is bringing additional jobs to Joplin as it turns EaglePicher Medical Power into a “strategic business unit” alongside its traditional aerospace and defense units.

“We believe it will probably be one of the strongest growth elements in the next five years,” said Randy Moore, who took over this summer as president of EaglePicher Technologies.

Growth for the business unit that makes and markets the implantable medical batteries could be double-digit in the next few years, according to Moore and Joe Marotta, vice president and general manager of the new subsidiary.

EaglePicher has been involved in medical battery production for more than a decade, but about 70 percent of the batteries were produced at the company’s operations in Vancouver, British Columbia, with the rest made in Joplin.

As part of the company’s initiative, production has begun to shift to a new manufacturing operation at 8035 E. 26th St.

Between that location and other jobs that might be shifted to EaglePicher plants on Range Line or C and Porter streets, as many as 50 positions would be created through the end of the third quarter of 2009, Moore said.

EaglePicher Medical also will establish a corporate headquarters, probably in either Kansas City or Dallas, Moore explained, along with some research-and-development operations there.

“Both of those cities are closer to our customers,” Moore said.

“These batteries are all for implantable medical use,” said Marotta, and have a number of applications, with the most promising being pacemakers, implantable cardiac defibrillators, monitoring patients who are at risk for heart attack, as well as for neurostimulation and pain management.

Other uses for medical batteries include spinal-cord stimulation and deep-brain stimulation, the latter of which can be used for patients who suffer from depression and epilepsy. Batteries also can be implanted in the skull itself and used in cochlear implants to help those with hearing loss and retinal implants for those with vision problems.

Some of the lithium-ion batteries are rechargeable but others last for years.

In fact, according to Moore, the longest-lived lithium-ion implantable batteries on the market, with a lifespan of 10 years, are made by EP, with competitors getting no more than seven to eight years out of their batteries.

Last year, EaglePicher also introduced what it described as the world’s smallest implantable battery, no bigger than a grain of rice, according to Moore and Marotta. It can be deployed via catheterization procedures. The battery is 50 percent smaller and lighter than other commercially available batteries, according to the company.