That would indeed be a touchscreen that uses a grid of IR LED's to locate single-location X/Y coordinates.
I suspect the reason an interface board is so expensive is because there's still a considerable number of industrial machines (CNC, lathes, presses, etc) that use it, so you are looking at pricing for people who *must* have the touchscreen working at all times.
Unfortunately the one I have comes with an onboard microcontroller and the cable hanging off is just RS-232. Yours is not.