US companies are seeking partnerships with Irish businesses to exploit what they say are growing opportunities in the European healthcare market.

A group of small and medium-sized US healthcare companies arrived in Dublin yesterday on the second leg of a trade mission to Ireland and Britain.

The group is backed by the international trade administration of the US Department of Commerce. Mr Nealton Burnham, deputy assistant secretary for export promotion services with the administration, told The Irish Times yesterday that the companies were seeking licensing, joint venture and distribution deals with Irish companies.

He pointed out that the national health service reforms under way in a number of European countries, including Britain and Ireland, presented these businesses with a range of opportunities.

"America has a lot of the advanced technologies that they need, and they are looking to America to provide that," he said.

Mr Burnham said that just 1 per cent of US small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) exported their products. He explained that many of them did not have the "international outlook" that SMEs in other countries had, and had no experience of exporting.

While his agency focuses on helping these businesses to develop export markets, he stressed that the trade mission's aim was broader than simply selling US products here.

"We are looking to sell products and to identify agencies and distributors," he said. "One of the the things we try to do with SMEs is to try to establish business relationships and opportunities for them."

He explained that this included establishing partnerships with companies here to distribute the US businesses' technologies and products in Europe.