Nanox Imaging is ramping up construction of its manufacturing plant in South Korea in the face of increased demand for its new X-ray system, company officials announced Wednesday.
The investor-backed, Israel-based startup is aiming to upend radiology with its Nanox.ARC technology based on a novel digital semiconductor. As part of the process, it’s now constructing a fabrication plant in East Asia at an estimated cost of $40 million.
Nanox said it hopes to have the facility up and running in the first quarter of 2022, becoming one of the primary production sites for its products.
“The growing interest in demand for our systems has required us to ramp up our plans and timeline for the Nanox Digital Source fabrication,” Chairman and CEO Ran Poliakine said March 10, adding that they’re “undergoing a smooth transition from development to manufacturing.”
In the meantime, the firm continues working with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to obtain 510(k) clearance. Poliakine told investors last week that he’s confident Nanox will gain the greenlight this year for both single- and multi-source versions of its imaging device.
The system uses what Poliakine called a digital microelectromechanical cathode Nanox believes can achieve the same functionality as legacy X-ray systems on analog cathodes, but at lower production costs. The Nanox.ARC will be a 3D tomosynthesis full-body imaging system that generates high-resolution images. They plan to distribute the systems at little to no cost and charge providers based on a pay-per-scan basis.
Nanox has also established a local South Korean subsidiary and last year scored a $20 million investment from local communications technology giant SK Telecom.
“Scaling up the production line to meet market demand is one of our main priorities, as we would like to see the Nanox.ARC systems tested and operating globally as soon as possible,” Ilung Kim, chairman of Nanox Korean Inc., said in a statement.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.