St. Jude Medical, Inc., a cardiovascular and implantable neurostimulation devices company, is expanding its Liberty operations, media sources reported. The company expects to staff around 300 employees over the next five years, company’s spokesperson Amy Jo Meyers said. These employees will manufacture hybrid micro-circuits, which are used in the company’s pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs).
“These are basically what you see on ‘E.R.’ when they place it on a patients’ chest and say, ‘Clear!’, only inside the body,” Meyers said. “The devices have enough electrical capacity to shock the heart back to life.”
The capacitors are built in the company’s current facility located in the Pickens County Industrial Park.
Meyers said the new employees will build the micro-circuits in an adjacent 60,000 square foot facility.
“The micro-circuits are essentially the computer brains of the device,” Meyers said.
20 employees are currently at work that facility, and company officials expect to have 40 employees by the end of 2009.