Special To Dentaltown by Allan Mann

Finnish-born digital radiography technologist and inventor Paul Suni has helped develop the silicon image sensor technologies that launched the top five brands of digital radiography available today. His company, Suni Medical Imaging, Inc., designed and manufactured digital radiography sensors for nearly half of the major digital radiography brands before selling them under their own brand name starting in 2002. If you’re one of the two Dentaltown readers in five who has adopted digital radiography in your practice, the chances are 50-50 that SUNI manufactured your sensors.

A conversation with Paul Suni is a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose – you find yourself in the middle of a torrent of facts and philosophies . But one thing becomes immediately clear: the Berkeley-educated semiconductor physicist, entrepreneur and digital radiography evangelist is an anomaly in Silicon Valley. He combines the quick mind of an inventor and the toughness of an entrepreneur with a keen sensitivity for the dentist-patient relationship and a highly ethical approach to business practice. He is more interested in people than things and he’s obsessed not only with the quality of the technology but with the way it impacts the dentist’s office. He speaks of the “chairside” experience and the “triangle-of-drama” of dentist, hygienist and patient. He’s a hard-hitting businessman, but he talks with great conviction about the “ethos of business” and the importance of operating with “the highest personal values in mind.” He’s dynamic and outspoken, creative and competitive, irreverent and complex, but at the same time as down-to-earth as the dentists who buy his products.

I talked with him recently about the digital revolution and his role in creating it.

Q: How did you get started in digital radiography?
Paul Suni: In 1986, I was working as a semiconductor design engineer on the first team to commercialize the image sensor chips that enabled the fax and camcorder industries to be born. I led the development of the image sensor component of the first commercial CEREC™ machine. It was a very challenging project but we exceeded everybody’s expectations – including mine. Ever since then, whenever an image sensor chip needed to be designed for dental applications like digital radiography, I was asked to be involved. We designed the first digital radiography chips for Trophy Radiologie and Siemens A.G. which are now sold as the Kodak and Sirona brands.

Q: You’re clearly a man who enjoys a challenge.
Paul Suni: Two very senior technologists told me that the CEREC spec was impossible to achieve – that it would be years before semiconductor processing would allow such a device to be successfully produced. I was extraordinarily intimidated by that, but I put my heart and soul into the project. I developed a taste for the most difficult and so-called impossible technology projects. Still today, I love nothing more than to be confronted by what other experts say is impossible.

Q: How did you start your company?
Paul Suni: In April 1992, while heading up Orbit’s CCD and CMOS image sensor technology business, I got a call from an electronics consultant named David Schick who said he had gone to the ends of the earth to find somebody to develop intraoral film-sized CCD chips for his startup called Schick Technologies. He was desperate after having been turned down by my image sensor technology colleagues around the world who told him that the chip size requirement was impossible to achieve. We managed to come up with novel ways to simplify the design and manufacturing processes so that we could create the chips economically.

In 1995, I acquired the design portion of the Orbit image sensor business with $10,000 in personal savings, rented an R&D space and paid Orbit around $350,000 out of my profits over three years. In the first couple of years, the SUNI team developed image sensors for the Hubble telescope program, the Keck 10m astronomical telescope and an incredibly fast 100X CD-ROM device among other things. In 1997, I decided to focus the company entirely on digital radiography. I then came up with the technology to create our super-thin intraoral digital radiography sensor technology. We’ve shipped more than 11,000 sensors under the DMD, Dentrix and Lightyear brands since 1998 – and we still support every single one of them.

Q: In an online poll Dentaltown conducted recently*, two out of five dentists said they have adopted digital radiography, but three-quarters of those who have not cited cost as their primary concern. What do you have to say to them?
Paul Suni: It has been well documented that the return on investment on going digital is phenomenal – especially when implemented in a skillful way. The average dental practice starts saving more than $1,000 a month right away and payback is typically six months to a year. Even so, I know many dentists are concerned about the hidden costs: Will there be down time during the conversion? Will my staff stick around if I impose this technology on them? Is the equipment reliable? How quickly will it become obsolete? I think it’s a lot like buying a car or a major appliance – it’s as much about the quality of the company that makes the product as it is about the product itself.

Q: What should a dentist look for in choosing a company to go digital with?
Paul Suni: The first thing you want to know is how deep their experience is and how committed they are – I mean from actions, not just words. Are they men and women of commitment or do they just talk a nice game? How long have they been in business? How long have they been selling this particular product? Did they create it or do they just package it for sale? Do they manufacture the whole product or just some of the components? Do they produce it at all, or just market it? If they don’t manufacture the sensors, who does? Is it a U.S. manufacturer or does the technology come from off-shore?

Q: Why is all that important?
Paul Suni: You want a company that knows its product well – not only well enough to sell it, but well enough to help you and your staff learn how to use it properly. And, of course, they need to know the product well enough to fix it should anything go wrong. You also need to be sure they’ll still be in business when you need their help. We invented our technology and we’ve been in business for nearly a decade. Suni is the only digital radiography company in the U.S. that designs, manufactures, markets and services its own digital radiography chips right here in the U.S. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.

Q: Doesn’t that degree of vertical integration limit the number of products you can offer?
Paul Suni: We are committed only to one thing – digital imaging for dentistry. We make digital radiography equipment and digital intraoral video cameras. That’s all we do and we do it well. Our customers know our full attention is focused on the equipment we sell them. We’re not going to be distracted from their needs by demands in other areas of the business.

Q: What about sales volume. Does that make a difference?
Paul Suni: Absolutely. You may have read studies indicating doctors and hospitals that perform the most heart surgeries have the best outcomes. That’s because experience creates expertise. We produce more sensors than anyone else in the U.S. and that makes us the most skilled at it. Our team has also been at this almost 20 years – longer than anyone else in the business. Nobody knows the technology – or the customer – better than we do.

Q: Despite your leadership position in the digital radiography industry, you’re a relatively small company compared to say, Kodak. Is that an advantage or disadvantage to customers?
Paul Suni: Well first of all, any dental technology company like us that breaks $16 million in annualized sales in this industry is considered a very major company. The point, however, is that my company is lean, agile and service-oriented. It’s going to stay that way because that is the culture we have built and established as integral to our attitudes and systems. When you deal with Suni, you don’t have to worry about wading through a huge bureaucracy to get the personalized attention you need. Every one of my people is an expert in what they do. Today we have a staff rapidly approaching 100 people who are dedicated to all aspects of the business from design to manufacture to sales to service and training. They know each customer represents a significant opportunity for our business – not only on their own, but in terms of the business they generate through referrals. We succeed like dental practices do – by paying attention to the basics. We thrive only because our customers have good experiences with SUNI products. It’s that simple. Basics are the lifeblood of success. Every dentist knows that. I think that inspires confidence in our customers because we understand them.

Q: What other benefits do you believe your company has to offer?
Paul Suni: We do a great job of creating and maintaining a culture within the organization that supports quality and continuous improvement. Everybody knows everybody else personally and isn’t going to “pass the buck” to someone else when it comes to the product or the customer. And we can promote a commitment to quality that touches every employee. Our stated commitment at SUNI is “to satisfy the requirements of our customers according to the highest standards of performance in the generation, delivery and support of its products and services.” And when I say “highest standards” I mean the highest possible standards of quality and reliability. Every employee knows that and every employee participates in monitoring and continually improving our performance in meeting those standards. Coming from the semiconductor industry these things are real and alive for us every day. And they are powerful.

Q: You’ve been described as an engineer with the soul of a dentist. What do you think of that?
Paul Suni: Well, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but what I think it means is this: people come first. We don’t identify ourselves as a producer of technology– we see ourselves as a contributor to the clinical experience. Everything critical in a dentist’s office happens within the “triangle-of-drama” formed by the dentist, patient and hygienist. It’s that chairside experience we’re focused on. If it doesn’t enhance the chair-side experience of all three, it’s not helping enough. And if it’s not helping, it’s not worth doing.

Q: How are you, as an engineer, able to identify with the chairside experience?
Paul Suni: I knew when I started creating the technology that patient comfort was an important issue for dentists, hygienists and obviously patients, so the first thing I did was create an image sensor chip technology that made it possible for us to create a very thin sensor while achieving very good image quality. That chip is now the basis for Dr. Suni digital radiography equipment and allows Suni to produce the thinnest as well as the most rugged sensors in the world. We also looked at the way in which hygienists had to position the sensors in the mouths of the patients. Our design makes it a snap for the hygienist to quickly put it in place, making for a faster procedure for the staff and a more comfortable experience for the patient. I also have a full-time dental hygienist on my staff who helps us stay connected to the chairside experience. She not only helps us understand how the equipment can be specified to make the work easier and quicker, she is also helping to design the training component that we’re adding to our array of services.

Q: How does the training work?
Paul Suni: Our hygienists provide two days of intensive training to be sure that the transition to digital goes smoothly. The first day, they help their counterparts in the dental office understand how to use the equipment. Then they spend an entire day as part of that “triangle-of-drama” I talked about – working side-by-side with the dentist and hygienist as they see patients. This hands-on experience not only helps the dentists and staff see how best to use the equipment, but it gives our trainers an opportunity to be sure they can correct any problems in a “live” situation. Our work is not done until the dentist and hygienists are completely at ease with the use of the equipment with patients.

Q: When DO you consider the job done?
Paul Suni: I have an interesting metric. I consider our job done when the dentist unplugs the film processor. We won’t be completely satisfied until every dentist in America has made the benefits of digital radiography available to his patients and his staff. We won’t rest until the last film processor is unplugged.

Q: That’s a likely scenario, given the fact that Dentaltown’s poll* indicated that 95% of dentists who have upgraded to digital said they’d never go back to film. Why the high satisfaction level?
Paul Suni: Well, I’d like to say that a good part of it is because so many of them are using Suni-made equipment! But the reality is that digital is simply the best technology available for all concerned. Dentists love it because it saves money in film costs and helps them make more accurate diagnoses and explain the images better on a large monitor to their understandably anxious patients. Hygienists love it because it makes their work so much quicker and easier. Patients love it because it is more comfortable than film and reduces their exposure to dangerous radiation while giving them a better look at their dental problems. Even government regulators love it because it means fewer toxic chemicals to sully the environment.

Q: What’s the future for Suni Medical Imaging?
Paul Suni: Today, SUNI is a mature, complete company having all the pieces from technology creation through delivery of products, services and support directly to dental practices. The future is a matter of continuing to listen carefully to what dentists need and satisfying those needs while continuing to focus on quality and keeping it simple. SUNI will become widely recognized in the dental industry as a high-tech, high-touch company that produces enduring value for its customers.