Case Study: Operation Smile achieves faster surgical evaluations and improved patient outcomes with Microsoft SharePoint

Changing smiles, changing the world through cloud technology

Operation Smile is a Virginia Beach–based nonprofit that provides free cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial-repair surgeries to nearly 20,000 children a year worldwide. With a small IT team, the organization struggled with manual, resource-intensive evaluation workflows, secure global patient data management and the need to scale operations and surgical quality across dozens of countries.

Using donated Microsoft Azure, SharePoint and Power BI services, Operation Smile built a custom workflow where volunteers upload pre/post‑surgical data to an Azure-hosted EMR, SharePoint automates evaluator notifications, and Power BI delivers real‑time visualizations. The solution cut evaluation time by two-thirds, accelerated surgeon feedback and training, improved outcomes and reporting, ensured compliant global data protection, and freed the IT team to focus on scaling the program and reaching more children.

Operation Smile

Chris Bryant

Senior Vice President of Enterprise Applications and Technology