Advanced Information Management, Inc.

Established 1978

2 Systems Dr.

Appleton, WI 54914

Phone: [phone]

www.aimcares.com

Most people today have more computing power on their wrists than computers possessed in 1978, when Charles F. Schwass established Advanced Information Management, Inc. Another major change in the past 20+ years has been a dramatic drop in the cost of computers, much to the relief of the long-term care facilities to which the company has been supplying software for nearly two decades.

Advanced Information Management, Inc. (AIMI) originally started in Neenah, Wisconsin, as a software generalist, custom-developing most software applications custom for each client. Back then, everything sold had to be individually programmed, so AIMI had to price everything by the hour. The company's technical programming rate was $12.00/hour, but it was the hardware prices that really stung. For example, in 1978 AIMI installed a computer with a 14-megabyte hard drive, one monitor, one printer and only a quarter of a megabyte of memory. This hardware cost $68,000!

AIMI dedicated itself to the Continuing Care Retirement Community market in 1980. At that time, computers were used only in a few facilities--and almost exclusively for financial processing. The general acceptance of the personal computers and MS-DOS had not yet arrived, so the operating systems used back then were proprietary. In fact, during this period, nursing homes would frequently pick out the hardware they wanted and then just take whatever software would run on it. A lot has changed.

Today, AIMI's software offerings have grown to encompass all aspects of information management that long-term care facilities might need--not just financial data. AIMI is known as the industry leader for timely release of software applications. It was the first long-term care software vendor to release a totally integrated (not interfaced), 32-bit, Windows-based application three years ago.

The company's fourth largest expense is training and education for staff and clients, and its main focus for improving long-term care has been--and will continue to be--education. It is widely accepted in the long-term care industry 32 to 36% of a facility's data processing budget should be earmarked for that purpose. AIMI's release of Computer Based Training (CBT) tools has helped dramatically to reduce the amount of training required for any individual.

Long-term care as it relates to computerization will change dramatically over the next decade, AIMI believes. A significant move away from computing as we know it today will take us into totally wireless data communications, miniature point-of-care data-collection devices with voice and video combined, and completely paperless facilities. New software standards built around Web browsers will make transition from one software package to another a painless event.