How Sentara Moved Epic to the Cloud, Saved Millions and Launched a Spinoff
Healthcare IT News, May 6th, 2025 – https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/how-sentara-moved-epic-cloud-saved-millions-and-launched-spinoff
Virginia Beach, VA, Sentara Health CTO Shares With Healthcare IT News How Moving To The Cloud Saved Millions and Launched Healthcare Cloud-based network specialists OptFi. Sentara Health, a nonprofit health system based in Norfolk, Virginia, that operates multiple hospitals, medical groups and other care facilities, decided to migrate its EHR systems to the cloud – specifically, Epic on Microsoft Azure.
But first, a Pandemic…
Jeff Thomas is senior vice president and chief technology officer at Sentara Health. He describes himself as not your traditional healthcare IT professional. “All of this became very important because of what happened after we started this journey: We were in the middle of the cloud journey when COVID hit, so fortunately, we had the ability to scale during COVID,” Thomas recalled.
“And when I say scale, we were able to scale our front-end and everything else in some interesting ways. If we hadn’t put the cloud in place, we wouldn’t have been able to scale.
“It would have cost us millions of dollars, and we would have waited a long time to get things,” he continued. “We were able to do a lot of stuff very quickly because we already had about 60% of our infrastructure in the cloud for computing, for front-end with Windows, virtual desktops, those kinds of things – and the capacity to shift 8,000 people home.”
The health system’s cloud migration team took learnings from the effort and spun them out into OptaFi, which offers best practices and technical capabilities for moving Epic EHR workloads from on-premise to the cloud. Sentara’s CTO gives an inside look. “OptaFi is a joint venture between Infinite Computer Solutions, which has a history of managed services and large-scale support, and Sentara’s experience with movement of healthcare to the cloud,” Thomas said. “Not just the infrastructure, but the organizational transition and the upskilling – OptaFi is built by healthcare for healthcare.
“This is a company going out and helping CIOs and CTOs go through this transition process,” he continued. “The learnings we have that make not just getting to the cloud but running effectively in the cloud work over time.”
Read complete interview here: https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/how-sentara-moved-epic-cloud-saved-millions-and-launched-spinoff
About OptaFi, LLC – http://www.optafi.com/
OptaFi, LLC is a joint venture launched in 2022 between Sentara Healthcare and Infinite Computer Solutions. Headquartered in Virginia Beach, Va., OptaFi’s mission is to modernize healthcare environments with a secure, cloud-first, high-speed, and cost-controlled digital landscape. Designed by Healthcare for Healthcare, core services include:
- EMR on Cloud (Azure, AWS, Hybrid Cloud adjacent) transitions and management
- Healthcare enterprise data analytics platform build and management
- Cloud HIPAA / NIST security framework build, manage and deploy
- Cloud cost analysis and assessments (spend control and telemetry)
About Infinite Computer Solutions – http://www.infinite.com/
Infinite, founded by Sanjay Govil, is a global technology platform and solutions provider headquartered in Rockville, Md. The Company serves the following sectors: Healthcare, Telecom, Media, Technology, Banking & Financial Services/Payments, and Public Sector. With proprietary frameworks, platforms, accelerators, and domain experts, Infinite has been solving challenges for Fortune 1000 companies since 2001. Core service offerings include IT outsourcing, digital transformation, cloud migration services, application development management services, quality engineering and assurance, product & platform engineering, and infrastructure services.
