Watch how Operation Smile is bringing more children “from hopelessness to possibility”

This post is by Carrie Landry.

Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate enough to see how businesses that transform to digital business are changing the landscape of the modern enterprise. We all know these changes result in larger profit margins, happier and more productive employees, greater work-life balance and a more secure business.

But every so often, I get to publish stories of digital transformation that are profoundly moving. On these occasions, I couldn’t imagine myself working anywhere else other than Microsoft.

The infamous Operation Smile is a conglomeration of medical professionals who travel the world, offering free-of-charge corrective surgery to children with facial deformities – most often, cleft palates. Anyone who has tried to nurse an infant or feed a child knows it can be challenging at the best of times; however, these anomalies in facial development usually impair the young at a level far beyond cosmetics, meaning they fail to get nutrition at the most critical stages in their growth and development.

Operation Smile has donated 220,000 surgeries since 1982, and typically administer three simultaneous clinics of surgeries in different locales across the planet. For a non-profit, globe-spanning enterprise: ease of scheduling, information-sharing and productivity tools are mission-critical, and time wasted on coordination means fewer patients obtain life-changing surgeries.

Their CTO says it all: “Nothing is more important to us than the health and well-being of children. Every dollar that we can save in how we conduct business goes directly to helping another child… that means a lot more children are getting the medical help they need.” Watch what happened when Operation Smile was able to pool its knowledge and streamline its coordination using Office 365. Sometimes, software really does save lives.

Watch more about Operation Smile:

 
Note: This video contains pre-operative images of several children Operation Smile has helped.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2016
  The comment has been removed