A YORK millionaire's new version of a tablet size videocamera designed to be swallowed is set to boom in the US.

Richard Edmondson, of Main Street, Fulford, chief executive of Thirsk-based Diagmed, is celebrating the 20th year since the start of his company with the launch today of a PillCam specially designed to explore patients' gullets.

It could end forever the uncomfortable and sometimes painful endoscopy procedures in which fibreoptic implements are inserted into patients' throats.

Already Diagmed has successfully marketed the gut-exploring Israeli invention to nearly 60 National Health Service and private hospitals in the UK.

Hospitals pay £35,000 for the computer hardware and each pill costs about £350.

Patients swallowing the use-then-throwaway PillCams wear a belt-like receptor on their stomach, picking up perfect "broadcast quality" images for eight hours of the route through the small intestine.

The response in the US has meant that Mr Edmondson's company on the Thirsk Industrial Park could soar this year to £7 million turnover.

He said: "Thousands of patients with all sorts of medical conditions who had given up hope were finally diagnosed by our pill whose tiny camera often finds early Crohn's Disease or bleeding in the small intestine. Our new camera, though, is specifically designed to explore the oesophagus.

"Interest in the US already suggests sales worth tend of millions of dollars, but I expect nothing like that in the UK, where everything has a cost to it with patient care taking second place. Endoscopy is a cheaper alternative, but our system could be used where patients cannot swallow.

"In the US all bills are picked up by the insurance companies and patient choice is therefore very powerful.

"In the UK, there is some reluctance to spend the initial capital costs on the small intestinal PillCams. York district hospital is one of those which has not been able to afford it.

"The tragedy is that while it has been cleared by the NHS, every individual hospital in the UK makes its own decisions.

"I spend a lot of my time trying to get hospital chief executives in the UK to recognise the tremendous savings that could be made in preventing operative procedures."

Updated: 11:27 Friday, January 06, 2006