BDIA Dental Showcase - The Dental Reporter
BDIA Dental Showcase, ExCeL London
ExCeL London filled up fast on 13th March and 14th March. The crowd was good. The energy on the floor was better than expected, and not just because of the product launches.
The brands that showed up this year were not running the usual trade show playbook. Several of them had something pointed to say about where UK dentistry is sitting right now, and they said it clearly. We identified seven exhibitors before the event and spoke with each one of them directly. Read their answers and our conversation notes and one thing keeps surfacing: practices know what they want. The problem is implementation, cost, and support once the purchase order is signed.
These seven brands are each working on a different part of that problem.
1. SprintRay
Most practices still send impressions out and wait. Two days, sometimes three. SprintRay cuts that cycle out entirely for workflows where it does not need to exist.
Chairside 3D printing lets clinicians produce a wide range of applications in-house. Crowns, surgical guides, night guards, models. The lab is still there for the complex cases. For everything else, the practice controls the timeline.
That shift matters more than the technology itself. Practices that produce in-house book appointments differently, manage patient expectations differently, and free up clinical time that was previously spent waiting.
At Showcase 2026, the conversations confirmed where the technology now sits in the adoption curve:
“The most meaningful conversations focused on education, digital dentistry, and the future of chairside 3D printing. Many clinicians were interested in how to integrate these technologies into their daily workflows and maximise the value of their existing systems. Additionally. existing SprintRay users, in particular, were keen to explore how they could get more out of their printers and expand their clinical applications.”
Early adopters are past the proof-of-concept questions. They are asking how deep the technology can go. That is a healthy place for the market to be.
2. Dandy
Buying a scanner is the easy part. Getting everyone in the practice to use it well, across every case type, is the problem most vendors do not fully solve.
Dandy pairs their scanner with unlimited training and a feature worth paying attention to: Live Scan Review. When a scan is going wrong, a lab technician connects to your screen. Live. Within 60 seconds.
Not a training video. Not a support ticket. Someone who looks at what you are looking at and tells you what to do next.
“Dentists want their office to go fully digital, but often still have to revert to physical impressions for complex workflows like full dentures or implants. The most common barrier discussed was the lack of effective training and clinical support. Many of our conversations focused on Dandy’s training program and the Live Scan Review program, where a lab technician can remote into your screen within 60 seconds and provide scanning guidance in real time.”
Practices are sitting on scanners they are not fully using because the support dried up after the sale. Dandy is trying to fix that. For clinicians who want to go fully digital but keep hitting walls mid-workflow, this is the gap that actually matters.
3. Toothpick
Procurement does not get much attention at dental shows. It should.
Most practices manage purchasing through a mix of habit, long-standing supplier relationships, and phone calls. It works until someone leaves, a supplier changes their terms, or the practice tries to scale. Toothpick brings procurement, payments, and vendor access into one platform. Practices order more simply. Suppliers get paid faster. The time spent chasing invoices and logging into four different portals goes somewhere more useful.
Dr. Mohamad Saad did not dress it up:
“Dental procurement is still fragmented and manual. Clinics dealing with multiple vendors, disconnected ordering systems, and limited payment flexibility.”
That is an accurate description of how most practices currently buy. It is also a solvable problem, and fixing it does not require a clinical workflow change. For practice owners looking for efficiency gains that do not involve retraining the whole team, this is a reasonable place to start.
4. Densura
Short entry. Because the point is simple.
Most dentists are on the same indemnity policy they picked up as a student. Densura’s question is: do you actually know what that policy guarantees?
Their model is insurance-backed contractual indemnity. When something goes wrong, the protection is in the contract. Not subject to discretion. Not reviewed by a committee. You speak directly to a dento-legal advisor who is also a practising dentist.
Jolanta Ribakova, Business Development Manager for London:
“Many dentists stay with the same defence union that they signed up to as a student, only to discover the limitations of discretionary indemnity when it’s too late.”
The conversation at Showcase was not about switching providers. It was about awareness. Dentists did not always know there was a difference. That is the problem Densura is fixing first.
5. Veraco
Surface disinfection wipes are so routine they have become invisible. Which is why most practices have never added up how much plastic they go through in a month.
Veraco’s HyGe dispenser produces wipes on demand from a dry biodegradable roll, applying a measured dose of disinfectant as each one comes out. The infection control standard stays the same. The plastic footprint does not.
Independent analysis puts the carbon reduction at 84 percent against conventional pre-saturated wipes. Running costs go down, not up.
Charles Churchman on what he heard at Showcase:
“Dentists want to reduce plastic waste and carbon footprint but cannot compromise infection control or the way their teams work.”
That tension is real, and HyGe resolves it without asking practices to change how they work. The 84 percent figure tends to land well once people see it. Most had assumed a greener option would cost more.
6. Systems for Dentists
A patient books online. They arrive and fill in the same information on paper. Reception re-enters it. The dentist asks for it again at the chair. Treatment gets planned verbally. Payment is chased later.
Most practices know this is inefficient. Fixing it is harder than it sounds because the systems involved rarely talk to each other.
Systems for Dentists connects the full journey in one platform, from online booking and pre-arrival digital documents through to treatment planning, payment, and practice reporting. Less manual re-entry. Fewer gaps between the surgery and reception. A cleaner picture of how the practice is actually performing.
David White on the conversations at Showcase:
“A lot of the discussions focused on understanding how AI could genuinely help reduce admin, improve efficiency, and support practice teams rather than just being another industry buzzword.”
Practices are not rejecting AI. They are asking it to do something specific and prove it. Systems for Dentists is building toward answers that are practical rather than promotional, which is a more useful position to be in right now.
7. UKLoupes
Good loupes change how a dentist works. Posture improves. Strain reduces. Clinical precision goes up. Over a career, the difference is significant. The problem has always been that bespoke magnification carries a price tag that pushes many clinicians toward off-the-shelf options that were never quite right.
UKLoupes offers bespoke loupes and lighting without the inflated pricing. Their remote-first approach means fittings do not require a half-day out. The process is faster, and accessible to practices that cannot afford the downtime of an in-person setup.
Will Stone:
“Many conversations centred on finding a loupe solution that felt bespoke, comfortable and clinically effective without the premium price tag.”
The demand has always been there. UKLoupes is changing the assumption that bespoke has to mean expensive.
From the TheDentalReporter Team
BDIA 2026 told us something we had already suspected. UK dental practices are not resistant to change. They are stretched, asked to evaluate more products than ever, and getting sharper about separating genuine solutions from noise.
The brands that stood out at this show could answer three questions without hesitation. What does this change on Monday morning? What does it actually cost? And who picks up the phone when something goes wrong?
That is the bar now. Practices investing in 2026 are not buying a vision. They are buying something that works in a busy surgery with a full appointment book.
