Offshore Pioneers Celebrate 25 Years in the Phillippines

Once the focus of great controversy, Interdent in Manila has grown to a staff of 700 and regularly services a few hundred laboratories in 78 countries.

Jerry Doviack used to be shunned at laboratory meetings. Now, 25 years later, laboratory owners are flocking to him for advice.

Jerry and his wife, Tina, owners of Continental Dental Laboratory in California, are the pioneers in offshore laboratory work. In the early 1980s--wary of a declining economy, soaring gold prices, HMOs and other disturbing trends in the insurance industry--the Doviacks began researching the feasability of offshore production. They settled on the Philippines and, in 1984, opened Interdent, Inc.--operating completely independently from Continental--to provide outsourcing services to laboratories around the world.

Although that out-of-the-box thinking didn't make them popular at the time, things have come full circle. "It's amazing how much attitudes have changed....