How Data Can Save Lives

Earlier this summer, EGPAF was pleased to participate in Hack4Good, a charity Hackathon event hosted by TDG and Microsoft at the Microsoft Business Applications summit in Atlanta, GA.

At Hack4Good, EGPAF employees Stephanie Bruno, Shannon Lindsay, and Aliza Lailari from the Informatics team collaborated with volunteers from around the world to provide technology-related solutions for charities like EGPAF. The judging panel included industry leaders such as Erik Arnold, Global CTO of Tech for Social Impact at Microsoft Philanthropies. The event was a chance for participants to make a difference by building solutions for real, global challenges, using a suite of Microsoft tools.

EGPAF received real, takeaway technology solutions at the event; together, the group helped build a solution for EGPAF to help us collect data in the most remote, affected regions of the world. Also, more than $1,800 was raised for charity at the event, and the winning team selected EGPAF as the beneficiary!

“When different people, from all over the world, get together to participate in solving problems for organizations that are passionate about helping others less fortunate than ourselves, something special happens,” says Chris Huntingford, Partner Technical Architect at Microsoft.  “We saw this at Hack4Good! The attendees leveraged Microsoft’s Power Platform to assist in generating solutions for amazing organizations like EGPAF as a way of giving back to the community. Thank you to every single person who shared their time, expertise and passion. Their extraordinary effort has made a difference.”

EGPAF depends on data and relies on timely and accurate data for decision-making. Microsoft’s Power Platform enables EGPAF to effectively track and convey the immense scale and impact that our lifesaving work has. Moreover, three Microsoft employees recently generously donated their time through the company’s MySkills4Afrika program to provide regional trainings to EGPAF staff, hosted in Kenya, Lesotho, and Cote d’Ivoire.

“The data is the most important thing we have. Using Microsoft Power BI and analytics tools helps us make better decisions and save more children’s lives,” says Stephanie Bruno, Senior Data Architecture Manager – Informatics at EGPAF.

Our global activities reach children of all ages, infants through adolescents, as well as women, men, and their families to achieve lasting impact toward ending HIV and AIDS worldwide. We engage in the most affected regions in the world, and have a global footprint reaching thousands of health facilities in 19 countries, with a particular focus in Africa. Amongst our programs, EGPAF tracks data points such as how many women were tested for HIV, how many tested positive, and how many exposed newborn infants remain HIV negative.  In every country where we work, our employees must be able to access the data and make informed decisions daily, without waiting for data to be centrally collected. Our work with Microsoft enables us to illustrate that data in real-time and to improve our programs.