RELATED CONTENT
DRUGOGRAPHY
Home > About AIT > Company History
AIT’s tagline, “A Higher Standard of Service,” reflects the values that have guided the company’s operations since its 1990 start-up. After 20 years in academia, Founder and Chairman Michael A. Evans, Ph.D. emptied his life savings to start a business that would take his expert knowledge of toxicology to the next level. His new career goal was to provide clients with superior testing on cutting-edge equipment handled by skilled workers trained to manage the process.
“I was very successful in my career as a professor. But the whole reason for starting AIT was to create something of value—to clients, my employees and the community—and say I played a role in its development,” Evans explained. “I wanted a company that reflected my values and vice versa.”
Evans’ corporate success was gained by overcoming an initial lack of business savvy and slow expansion of clientele. In the transition from professor to entrepreneur, Evans had much to learn about business, and in the early nineties, AIT lost its most profitable client along with 85 percent of its revenue. Evans was urged to close the lab and file for bankruptcy. But quitting was not an option. “I have to be the best in everything I do, so when it came to starting a company, I wanted the best toxicology lab there was,” he said. “It’s not in my nature to give up.”
Evans demonstrated his commitment to AIT when he transferred ownership of the company to employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan in 2009.
Today, AIT is a national healthcare company specializing in compliance testing, forensic toxicology drug testing and clinical laboratory testing. AIT offers additional tools to healthcare practitioners conducting compliance testing in the form of AIT Pathways®, designed to help HCPs balance safety, efficacy and risk within their practice. AIT is proud of its national reputation as a premiere testing and research institution and its active role in legislation and public policy efforts to raise awareness about the role of compliance testing in combating prescription drug abuse.