Afia
Redefining Healthcare through IT

When Jeremy Nelson flipped through a guide book during his photography Safari in Tanzania, he was struck by the word ‘Afia’—health. Coincidentally, it was around the same time Nelson and his partner, Chris Akerley, were about to start a company—with the vision to use technology to change the face of healthcare. For the company, the name Afia could not have suited better.

Jeremy Nelson, CEO and Co- Owner of Afia has more to say, “A lot of CIO's are asking our help to make the right decisions on technology implementations that will make their company more successful in the future.” This is in line with the veracity that many healthcare executives are challenged with many competing priorities, such as implementing Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, responding faster to clients, meeting their staff’s needs, simplifying the data accessibility, and creating a secure infrastructure.

Headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI, Afia assists healthcare organizations in analyzing their IT infrastructures from top to bottom. “We approach an organization, evaluate their infrastructure, interview their IT staff, executive management, and also the end users to see what is working well and what is not,” explains Nelson. Essentially, Afia creates a roadmap to lead organizations to the next level of administrative and clinical efficiency.

Keeping with the current technological trends such as Enterprise Mobility Management, Afia enables connectivity across devices from anywhere. The company has also developed a secure solution that ensures HIPAA compliance for healthcare organizations. Additionally, Afia provides a highly available, fully redundant cloud solution, utilizing VMware’s virtualization platform over a tiered solid-state storage solution to give scalable results that are more nimble.“Additionally, we provide consulting services to help select and implement enterprise software solutions, such as Electronic Health Records, HR systems, and Finance systems,” explains Nelson.

To point out, many companies have gained indelible value from Afia, by making use of their services.

A number CIO's are asking our help to make right decisions on technology implementations that will make their company more successful in the future

To cite an example, a behavioral health organization, AWARE Inc. was preparing to implement an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for its 102 locations and 940 staff members to utilize it. AWARE contacted Afia to assist in the EHR selection and implementation process, as the client was primarily using a paper-based medical record system. The company also did not have a sufficient IT infrastructure which could support an EHR system. Not only did Afia help the client to select the right EHR and implementit in less than 12 months, Afia also helped rebuild the entire IT infrastructure for the organization on a virtual platform, collocated in a data center, and deployed a secure remote desktop solution to all staff. Aware benefitted from a centralized document management system and could securely login from anywhere.

Constantly researching the best practices useful to the healthcare market, Afia is continuing to bring innovations through a private cloud infrastructure, that offers a highly available, secure remote desktop, or manage disaster recovery at an affordable rate.

Forging a perfect balance between consulting division and vendor support, Afia is bringing more features and functionalities into their cloud offering. For instance, Afia will roll out a virtual desktop infrastructure soon into the healthcare market. Looking ahead, the company is also bringing data analytics to their solutions to add more value to patient care. “We also have some geographical expansion plans underway,” concludes Nelson.