German to English Medical Medical: Dentistry Titanium Magnetic Dental Implants

Happy New Year to everyone at ProZ. Hope you all had a great Christmas and managed to get some R & R.

After a couple of weeks off, I'm back into work again. Yet more dental stuff, but not too difficult at this stage.

However, I'm having some trouble with the word "Aufwand" as it appears in this sentence, which is part of a list of the advantages of a titanium magnetic implant:

"kostengünstig, da geringer zahnärztlicher Aufwand und einfache Labor-technik."

Aufwand seems to be one of those words that the dictionaries don't cover adequately. It has way more shades of meaning than the dictionaries suggest. And judging from the number of ProZ questions involving this word in the past (which I have studied before asking this), it has given a lot of other people grief over the years (including me on another occasion).

My current translation is as follows:

"Cost-effective, because it takes the dentist less time and the lab technique is easy."

I realise "gering" in the source text is not a comparative and so doesn't mean "less" per se, but it does seem to make sense to express it this way in the English text.

One thing I'm quite certain of: "Aufwand" does not mean "expenditure" here, unless I've overlooked something. So anyone who suggests "expenditure" will have their answer declined unless they can provide a very good reason for it.

I'm pretty sure it means something like "effort" or "effort required" here. The idea being that because the product is easy to use, it saves time and energy and thus money. But I'm open to other suggestions, provided they are backed up with references or at least a reasoned argument. Thank you in advance for your assistance.