Case Study: Operation Smile achieves faster surgical feedback and improved patient outcomes with Microsoft Power BI

Changing smiles, changing the world through cloud technology

Operation Smile, a Virginia Beach–based nonprofit that provides free cleft lip and palate surgeries to nearly 20,000 patients annually, needed to scale operations, protect patient data across more than 40 countries, and turn dispersed field data into timely, actionable feedback for surgeons. The organization adopted donated cloud technologies from Microsoft—using Azure for secure EMR storage, SharePoint for workflow automation, and Microsoft Power BI for analytics and dashboards—to improve data-driven decision-making and expand its reach.

Operation Smile built a workflow where volunteers upload pre/post-surgical photos and patient data into Azure, a custom SharePoint app automates evaluator notifications and data-sharing, and Microsoft Power BI delivers real-time visualizations and mobile dashboards. The solution cut evaluation time by two-thirds, replaced manual reporting with auto-refreshing dashboards, strengthened patient-data security via Azure compliance, and enabled faster surgeon feedback and program scaling—leading to improved surgical outcomes and greater capacity to serve more children.

Operation Smile

Chris Bryant

Senior Vice President of Enterprise Applications and Technology