Company Profile:
Smile Train
Smile Train is an international children’s charity with a sustainable approach to a single, solvable problem: cleft lip and palate. Millions of children in developing countries with unrepaired clefts live in shame, but more importantly, have difficulty eating, breathing and speaking. Cleft repair surgery is simple, and the transformation is immediate. Smile Train's sustainable model provides training and funding to empower local doctors in 85+ developing countries to provide 100% free cleft repair surgery in their own communities. Smile Train's sustainable approach means donations have both an immediate and long-term impact. Smile Train also leverages technology to do things faster, more cost-efficient and smarter. As a result of Smile Train’s efficiency and with the support of donors and partners around the world, Smile Train has transformed the lives of more than one million children by giving them the power of a smile.
Q: Please tell us how your business idea was conceived. Was there an "aha" moment or did it evolve gradually?
A: Over 170,000 children in the developing world are born with cleft lip and palate each year and many do not have the resources to undergo surgical repair. A lack of medical infrastructure and shortage of trained surgeons also pose major obstacles to providing treatment. Traditional aid programs such as “mission trips” involve the overseas transportation of surgical teams. While effective, those efforts are costly and provide no long-term solution. We focus on training surgeons to treat cleft lip and palate within their regions. This follows the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” The Smile Train Virtual Surgery Simulator, a freely available, internet-based surgical simulator for cleft lip and palate repair empowers local communities through training and provides a long-term scalable solution to the global problem of cleft.
Q: What's the most inventive, innovative, or disruptive aspect of your initiative?
A: The most disruptive aspect of our initiative occurred through our partnership with leaders in medicine and technology to create an innovative solution to the challenges of training cleft surgeons internationally. The Simulator is freely available, requires no specialized hardware or software for use, and is accessible from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. For the first time, cutting-edge digital simulations created by the surgical leaders in cleft care can be instantly delivered to the farthest reaches of the globe. Beyond "teaching a man to fish," this training tool is already penetrating where all the mission trips in the world cannot: into the essential everyday, year-round training of local physicians with limited access to surgical mentoring. The Simulator is used in 67 countries representing more than 86 percent of the global population; 48 of these countries are developing economies, representing 5.2 billion people.
Q: How will it help people live to their greatest potential or contribute to making the world healthier?
A: The Smile Train Virtual Surgery Simulator is training surgeons in the repair of the most common birth defect affecting the face. Beyond charitable endeavors, the technology behind the virtual surgery simulator has the potential to supplement any type of surgical training for any clinic or school with a laptop and Internet access. Because of its versatility, ease of use, and open access, institutions around the world have already inquired about developing similar tools for training surgeons and other healthcare professionals in a variety of surgical and medical procedures. This teaching tool has the potential to permanently change the course of medical education while improving the lives of children born in the developing world with cleft lip and palate each year.
Q: Five years from now, what would you like to be able to say has been your most important contribution to health?
A: Our most important contribution to health is in leveraging cutting-edge technology to train surgeons around the world. In five years we would like to report that the Smile Train Virtual Surgery Simulator has helped train hundreds of surgeons globally, who have each performed hundreds of cleft lip and palate reconstructive surgeries. This demonstration of scalable impact will validate our model for treating the global healthcare problem of facial clefts. We also hope that our use of technology for medical training will be adopted by other organizations interested in medical and surgical training in the developing and modern world.
Q: What single word or phrase best describes the culture of your startup and why?
A: Empowering. Smile Train is an international children’s charity with a sustainable approach to a single, solvable problem: cleft lip and palate. Millions of children in developing countries with unrepaired clefts live in shame, but more importantly, have difficulty eating, breathing, and speaking. Cleft repair surgery can be challenging, but the results are powerful and the transformation is immediate. Smile Train's sustainable model provides training and funding to empower local doctors in 85+ developing countries to provide 100 percent free cleft repair surgery in their own communities. Smile Train leverages technology to do things faster, more cost-efficiently, and smarter. As a result of Smile Train’s efficiency and with the support of donors and partners around the world, Smile Train has transformed the lives of more than one million children by giving them the power of a smile.