DrBicuspid.com Business & Industry Insider

Dear Business & Industry Insider,

Lots of new companies and products have come into the dental space recently:

• Lessons learned from the lumber industry are enabling S-Ray, a young company in Seattle, develop a new type of ultrasound device that could help dental practices increase productivity and enhance patient care by imaging hard- and soft-tissue structures concurrently -- without radiation. And the price tag's not bad either.

• CloudDDS isn't the only provider of a cloud-based service designed to connect dental professionals and enable them to share patient data and images in a HIPAA-compliant manner. But it may be the first to also offer its customers a cloud-based "mall in the sky" for dental office supplies.

• Fear of the needle affects dental patients of all ages and makes the dentist's job all the more difficult. But a new drug from St. Renatus -- an anesthetic nasal spray that can be administered by an assistant -- could change the equation entirely.

• Gaargle Solutions is offering Dovetail, a cloud-based, mobile electronic medical record and practice management software designed for dentistry.

In other news in the Business & Industry Community, E4D Technologies -- formerly D4D Technologies -- is looking to make dental CAD/CAM restorations even easier with the new E4D NEVO scanner and Design Center, designed to enable dental practitioners to provide chairside digital impressioning using a laptop computer and the company's new blue-laser scanner and design software.

Meanwhile, Sirona unveiled its new CAD/CAM for Everyone campaign in June, designed to showcase its range of digital impressioning products and demonstrate how this technology can be affordable for any dental practice and help improve patient care.

And after several rough years during the recession, the implant market appears to have staged a comeback in the U.S. Some markets outside of North America are hotter still, with claims of double-digit growth. So why aren't most implant manufacturers' financials reflecting these trends?

In M&A news, Mitsui Chemicals continues to expand its dental materials business, taking a 50.01% stake in U.S. denture maker Dentca. Earlier this year, Mitsui acquired Heraeus Dental for $578 million.

Meanwhile, Avista Capital Partners, a private equity firm, has acquired Zest Anchors, a California-based manufacturer of overdenture abutment solutions; Huron Capital Partners, another private equity firm, has invested in its second U.S. dental company as part of a "series of planned investments in the dental services industry"; and Vitera Healthcare Solutions has acquired SuccessEHS, a maker of electronic dental record and dental imaging products.