On its second annual Investor & ESG Day on April 7, Afya Ltd., Brazil’s largest end-to-end healthcare and medical education ecosystem which provides digital solutions to medical students and physicians, presented the Company’s strategy to continue to grow its platform and capabilities. Since its 2019 listing on the NASDAQ, Afya has made 10 strategic acquisitions that continue to drive the expansion of its digital services.

During the event, Afya unveiled Afya Digital Health, the Company’s digital solutions vertical as well as the details surrounding the continued growth and expansion of its digital platform that has been accelerated by the pandemic.

“Afya Digital Health will serve as an umbrella for our digital offerings,” said Lélio de Souza, Afya’s VP of Innovation and Digital Services. “Further investing in the health segment of our digital services will enable the Company to speed up the decision-making process and accelerate innovation that is much needed in healthcare.”

Afya is the only company in Brazil that provides resources to physicians both during their studies and throughout their professional career, as opposed to just during one phase of their journey. To that end, the Company is continuously evolving its capabilities with a mission to shape the future of the healthcare industry in Brazil for generations to come.

“By integrating education, healthcare and digital services, we are improving medical education and empowering physicians to better serve their patients,” said Afya’s CEO Virgilio Gibbon. “In the coming years we will focus on integrating our capabilities at scale and adding new solutions to our portfolio of services.”

Currently, Afya serves over 16,000 medical students and almost 20,000 other healthcare students at 26 campuses in 13 states in Brazil. In August of this year, Afya will begin to serve five new medical schools.

The Company’s medical education and health business segments serve close to 250,000 physicians and medical students. More than 33% of physicians in Brazil use at least one of Afya’s digital offerings. The Company’s digital solutions include:

1. Content and technology for medical education
2. Clinical decision software
3. Practice management tools & electronic medical records
4. Telemedicine
5. Digital prescriptions
6. Physician-patient relationship

Afya’s goal is to continue to expand across the core medical education business and the wider healthcare ecosystem through acquisitions, the addition of new offerings and by building partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry, laboratories, pharmacies, hospitals and healthcare providers. The Company has already signed 23 contracts with 18 pharmaceutical companies including Roche, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, among others.

Gibbon added: “The market in Brazil offers many more opportunities for consolidation of digital services across different segments of healthcare and medical education. With our unique business model and our first-hand knowledge of physicians’ needs, we are in a strong position to become the go-to integrated healthcare and medical education ecosystem in Brazil.”

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Afya provided an update to its ESG initiatives:

Governance and diversity. Afya renewed its commitment to having at least 50% of women in management positions by 2030 in accordance with the United Nations Global Compact’s Sustainable Development Goals. More than 37% of Afya’s management positions are held by women and 55% of its employees are women.

Energy and environment. It is expected that half of Afya’s Medicine campuses will use solar energy, and a number of them will implement initiatives that will save water (e.g. rainwater harvesting) and set targets for planting trees.

Gender Equality. Afya is one of 418 companies across 45 countries to join this year’s Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI). GEI measures gender equality across five pillars: female leadership and talent pipeline, equal pay and gender pay parity, inclusive culture, anti-sexual harassment policies, and pro-women brand.

Afya’s key success metrics include:

• Close to 250,000 physicians and medical students served
• Partnerships with over 1,000 hospitals and healthcare clinics
• 3 million people per month using Afya’s free references, perspectives and updates on medical news and scientific publications through PEBMED, the Company’s content portal
• 125,000 active subscribers and over 194,000 active users of Afya’s WhiteBook app helping doctors and medical students make faster and more accurate clinical decisions

Source: Afya Ltd.