£94k digital dental scanner for a growing practice

Marylebone Dental Group operates three surgeries across central London and had identified clear-aligner orthodontics as the highest-margin growth opportunity in their patient base. The route in was an iTero Element 5D digital intra-oral scanner — list price £94k including software, training and a service contract.

The four clinical partners had agreed a £350k loan facility earmarked for a planned fourth surgery in Fitzrovia. Drawing on it for a scanner — even one with strong economics — would have eaten into the deposit and signalled to the bank that the original purpose had drifted.

Equally, paying cash for a depreciating piece of medical tech, in a category where the manufacturer ships a meaningful firmware refresh every 18 months, is rarely the right call.

We placed the deal with a healthcare-specialist lender on a 60-month finance lease. The structure includes a quarterly upgrade option from month 36 onwards — at any point thereafter the practice can hand the existing scanner back, the outstanding balance is rolled into a new agreement on the latest model, and rentals reset.

That optionality is hard to put a price on in a fast-moving tech category. It also means the practice never ends up with a clinically obsolete asset sitting in the corner of a treatment room.

Monthly rental came in at roughly £1,820. The clinical team modelled clear-aligner cases at a contribution margin of around £1,400 each, with conservative volume of three new cases per week across the group. Break-even on the rental was hit inside the first month of trading; full payback on the underlying capital cost is forecast at month 14.

Cash on the partner loan facility remains untouched, and the Fitzrovia surgery is now scheduled to open in Q1 2026 as originally planned.