Azalea Health
This week Diana Keough and I sat down with Azalea Health’s CEO, Baha Zeidan, and VP of Sales, Justin Pierce. Our discussion focused on health information technology and how it can improve outcomes and reduce cost in a number of ways. Baha shared how cloud computing can help care coordination between facilities as well as provide dramatic improvements in efficiencies. An example he gave related to drug recalls. In an office that does not have access to a modern database or operating on paper, the simple process of determining which patients in a practice who take a given medication can take weeks. Conversely, with a cloud-based application, the query would provide an accurate, thorough response in seconds.
We talked about how the Affordable Care Act is requiring a move toward 100% compliance with EMR utilization among health providers. Baha and Justin explained the differences between the “legacy” systems of the previous few years and “modern” systems available today. Legacy systems require an application to be installed on every device or on a server system where a modern application is cloud-based. The modern system eliminates the need to perform updates on every device and maintenance of the servers/infrastructure to keep them running. Instead, the cloud provides redundancy on their centralized systems that eliminate or significantly mitigate downtime. Additionally, with the cloud, updates automatically become available to the user when they access their EMR. Furthermore, the structure of cloud-based data allows for a more free-form query of available information to make decisions, identify trends, and make more accurate predictions based on available data. As healthcare organizations begin to be more able to share data elements, the possibility exists we can begin to avoid duplication of diagnostic tests/procedures. It was clear as the conversation continued there are compelling reasons for the healthcare arena to catch up with the financial sector with regard to use of cloud-based data and computing to help decrease costs and improve patient outcomes.
Special Guests:
Baha Zeidan, CEO of Azalea Health 
- Masters, Information Systems Management, Keller Graduate School of Management, Devry University
- Member, Technology Association of Georgia
- Member, American College of Healthcare Executives
- Recipient, 2014 Phoenix Award for Emerging Company of the Year, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce
Justin Pierce, VP of Sales of Azalea Health 
- BBA, Business, University of Georgia Terry College of Business
- Director of Sales/Marketing, SimplyMD
- Former Sales Training Supervisor, Cbeyond
Diana Keough, CEO/Founder of ShareWIK.com 
- Journalism Instructor/Guest Lecturer, Emory University
- Member, Koles College of Business Advisory Board, Kennsaw State University
- Former Front Page Series Writer, The Plain Dealer
- Former Reporter/Commentator, WKSU
- Co-author, “Building a Business, Building a Life: The Incredible Life of a Woman Business Owner”
