Glidewell Laboratories has announced the acquisition of San Diego-based IOS Technologies. The combination of the two companies will enable Glidewell to provide a complete chairside restorative system. The deal is expected to close on or about September 1, 2012.
"IOS will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Glidewell when the deal closes in a month or so," Dave Casper, president of IOS, said during an interview with DrBicuspid.com. "Glidewell has been a strategic investor in IOS for a number of years, pretty much since the inception of the intraoral scanning side of IOS. In parallel, we've been working on the chairside mill to pair with any intraoral scanning device, and then it just made sense as both those projects came to competition that we marry the two under one roof and bring it to market."
— Dave Casper, president, IOS
Technologies
Glidewell's TS150 Chairside Mill works with the digital impressions generated by the IOS FastScan system to fabricate dental restorations.
"The introduction of the comprehensive chairside solution -- the scanner paired with the mill, a robust software suite that allows dentists to do crowns in the office -- we're going headfirst into that market," Casper explained. "We believe that's the future of dentistry."
If that turns out to be true, that could put labs at risk, Casper noted. "If you believe that more and more dentistry is going to be done chairside, what does that mean for a dental lab? If we can participate in the materials side, which Glidewell is a very large materials manufacturer, we can help the dentist now matter how they decide to treat patients. That's Jim's [Glidewell] goal."
Shortly after IOS Technologies was founded in 2007, with the objective of bringing its intraoral scanning and digital impression technology to market, Glidewell Laboratories entered into a joint venture agreement with the company, and in 2010 the two companies launched the IOS FastScan digital impression system. Since partnering with IOS Technologies in 2007, Glidewell has supported the company's continued development of the IOS FastScan, as well as its marketing, sales, and continuing education efforts.
The purchase will lead to more collaboration, Casper said. "We're able to pair engineers with engineers, regulatory people with regulatory people, and it's already had a great impact."
IOS will stay at its San Diego manufacturing suite, the companies noted. The terms of the deal were not immediately made available.
