Dental group set to shine in North America

Published on Saturday 28 November 2009 12:22

CARIESCAN, a Scottish dental technology group, has the chance to sign a distribution agreement covering all of North America within weeks if it gains regulatory approval for the US this month.

The company, a phoenix from the collapse of university spinout Idmos, is in talks with one of North America's largest dental distributors.

While Cariescan is ready to begin selling its first product, the Cariescan Pro, in Canada, it requires approval from the US Food and Drug Administration before launching in the US.

Chief executive Graham Lay said he is holding talks about a distribution agreement for its products with an unnamed distributor in Canada.

If regulatory approval comes through this month he would try to extend this to also cover the US, the world's largest health market.

"We're hoping to get one single agreement covering all of North America," Lay said, with regulatory approval expected in the coming weeks.

"At the very least it would be Canada and then the US."

Lay said the company it is holding talks with is one of the leading players in North America, with 1,100 sales staff in the US alone, "which kind of makes our eyes water".

Cariescan bought the intellectual property of Idmos, the Aim-listed company which ran out of cash in early 2008, after a series of delays to its product launches. The handheld Cariescan Pro offers earlier and more accurate detection of decay than X-rays, it claims.

Lay, a former executive at Idmos, says Cariescan is more focused on commercial development than its predecessor.