A Cloud forGlobal Good

“This app, built here in Nepal by Nepali developers, can be the template. We can hand it off to the next government right at the beginning, so they can record where people live, where they come from, everything else, and store all of that information both on-premises and in the cloud.”

-Jamie McGoldrick, UN resident coordinator in Nepal

In April 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal and affected the lives of approximately 8 million people. Nearly 9,000 people died, and some 600,000 homes and buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. With many of the survivors living in tents, there was tremendous urgency to begin reconstruction before the brutal winter set in.

The daunting task of rebuilding began with mapping where the original structures had stood. In the past, such records were maintained on paper, which can be difficult or impossible to obtain following a disaster of this magnitude. To expedite reconstruction, the Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) Nepal—in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)—built a mobile phone app that tracks and coordinates logistics, personnel, and payments.

Built using Visual Studio and connected to Office 365, Power BI, SQL Server, and Microsoft Azure, the app was available through the Microsoft Store to Windows Phones in the field. It offered a flexible, cost-effective solution for overseeing a complicated recovery and rebuilding operation in a remote area that otherwise would have required far more time, resources, and money.

The cloud-based app tapped into a mobile phone’s GPS capabilities, allowing reconstruction crews to record precise coordinates and measurements for each building prior to demolition. The app also was used to manage daily cash payments to thousands of local workers, many of whom were clearing debris. That helped restart the country’s economy and infused money into communities that needed it most.

The app from UNDP and Microsoft has the potential to revolutionize how the world responds to disasters. Storing records securely in the cloud can help rebuild census data, property records, and land tenure rights—critical for recovery efforts in developing nations with rudimentary record-keeping systems. The app also can enable relief agencies to share valuable records created during early phases of a disaster to jumpstart reconstruction.

“It’s so huge,” says Jamie McGoldrick, who oversees the UNDP in Nepal. “We can revolutionize the entire global response to disasters. With a cell phone, we can change the world.”

Blindness affects 36 million people worldwide, and another 217 million have moderate to severe vision impairment. For them, everyday tasks such as identifying products in a grocery store, reading restaurant menus, and seeing who’s around them when they walk down the street can be challenging.

Microsoft software engineer Saqib Shaikh understands this firsthand. He lost his eyesight at age 7 and began using talking computers at a school for the blind. Seeing the positive impact technology can have, he envisioned using computers to improve life for the low-vision community. “One of the things I’ve always dreamt of since I was at university was this idea of something that could tell you at any moment what’s going on all around you,” he says.

Shaikh and his colleagues have been exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can empower the blind and low-vision community to experience their surroundings more vividly. Using Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs and AI technologies such as machine learning, the engineers have built “Seeing AI,” an app that reveals the visual world to blind and low-vision people. The technology can read text out loud, recognize people and their emotions, and even describe everyday scenes, such as a skateboarder performing a trick.

With Seeing AI, blind and low-vision people can use their iPhone or Pivothead SMART eyeglasses camera to better navigate their surroundings. The free app can identify a product by its barcode and call out the name. It can read documents, including headings, paragraphs, and lists, allowing users to skim through to find the text they need.

It can also recognize people based on their face and provide a description of their appearance, including their gender and facial expression. For example, the app can help users identify who they’re talking to by telling them, “I see two faces: 40-year-old man with a beard looking surprised and a 20-year-old woman looking happy.” Likewise, if a low-vision person is sitting in the park and hears nearby movement, the app can tell them: “I think it’s a young girl throwing an orange Frisbee.”

Microsoft’s goal is to get Seeing AI technology into the hands of as many blind and low-vision people as possible. “For me, it’s about taking that far-off dream and building it one step at a time,” Shaikh says. “Artificial intelligence is improving at an ever faster rate, and I’m really excited to see where we can take this. … I think this is just the beginning.”

“We’ve helped thousands of people in Pakistan and elsewhere speak to a doctor for the first time in their lives. We’re working in many areas that are conflict-stricken and in poverty. Based on the number of people we’ve helped, we’re bigger than many hospital groups, and yet we’re helping governments deliver healthcare at a tenth of the cost through digital solutions.”

-Justin Fulcher, founder, RingMD

Countless people around the world lack access to medical care, due to proximity, economics, cultural norms, or other barriers. India, for example, has less than one doctor per 1,000 individuals, according to the World Health Organization. For people in rural areas, traveling to and from the nearest hospital by bus can take half a day or longer. Many don’t have the time or money, while others are too ill for the journey.

During a trip to Indonesia, Justin Fulcher was taken aback when he saw the dichotomy of a man drinking water scooped from the ground while holding a mobile phone. Inspired, Fulcher founded RingMD, using cloud technology to help fill the gaps he perceived in the global healthcare ecosystem while increasing access and affordability for people in need. RingMD connects doctors and patients through an app that facilitates online video consultations, allowing users to speak with medical professionals and exchange medical files—anytime and from anywhere.

The platform is hosted by Microsoft Cloud, allowing it to scale much more quickly and cost-effectively than traditional health systems, which are reliant on physical infrastructure and on-site personnel. RingMD also employs machine learning, AI, and complex algorithms that enable it to provide patients with customized health recommendations.

RingMD now operates in nine languages across 10 countries, including India, Pakistan, and Thailand. It brings together healthcare professionals and patients across great distances at a fraction of the cost of conventional health services. And it has been a boon for practitioners like Dr. Vidya Neelkant, as well as the patients she treats virtually. She’s encouraged by the medical advice she’s able to provide using RingMD, particularly to women.

“Women in India don’t like to see male doctors, and they often live so far away from a hospital that they don’t get the care they need, especially when they’re pregnant,” Neelkant said. “It’s so good that I can help them have healthier pregnancies now and advise them on things like diet, hygiene, and how much to work. A mother’s health is very important for her baby, yet not everyone is getting this care, especially in the rural areas.

Worldwide, flight delays and disruptions cost the airline industry billions of dollars every year. Just one unscheduled delay and its ripple effect on the fleet and passengers can add up to a million dollars a day. Similarly, fuel costs generally account for a whopping 40 percent of airlines’ operating expenses. Even a 1 percent optimization of fuel consumption can save a carrier millions of dollars annually.

To reduce costs and improve their margins, airlines constantly search for ways to improve operational efficiency. With modern airplane engines equipped with thousands of sensors generating terabytes of data, advanced cloud technology offers new opportunities to do just that.

Airplane engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce offers comprehensive maintenance services to carriers that use its engines. To improve customer service and streamline operations, the company employs advanced analytics, combining sensor data and other information to maximize aircraft availability and fuel efficiency for more than 13,000 commercial aircraft engines in service.

Using Microsoft’s Azure platform, Azure IoT Suite, and the Cortana Intelligence Suite, Rolls-Royce is collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data from disparate sources at unprecedented scale. In doing so, the company is helping its customers pinpoint operational anomalies and optimize aircraft performance.

With the ability to analyze vast amounts of data, including engine performance snapshots, technical logs, flight plans, and weather information, Rolls-Royce is improving the reliability and efficiency of air travel. By comparing information from specific aircraft components with data models and other components in the fleet, for example, Rolls-Royce can alert flight crews when a piece of equipment is underperforming or due for replacement.

Rolls-Royce also can analyze fuel data to help airlines understand exactly which factors—including flight plans, equipment maintenance, weather, and discretionary fuel—have the most impact on fuel performance.

“Our goal is … to embrace the cloud and analytical technologies to deliver more expert insights to the right stakeholders at the right time,” says Nick Farrant, senior vice president at Rolls-Royce. “If we can do that and link new digital capabilities into our services, we can collaborate more deeply with our customers and solve many more of their problems.”

“They say your eyes are the window to your soul. I suppose this means technology allows me to bare my soul.”

-Steve Gleason, husband, father, former NFL player, and ALS activist

In the NFL, Steve Gleason was inspiring and relentless. The undersized player made it as a safety with the New Orleans Saints. And he became a local icon after making a remarkable play that helped unite the city following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Today, facing even longer odds, Gleason continues to unite and galvanize others. He was diagnosed in 2011 with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and has been stripped of his ability to speak, move, or even breathe unassisted. The disease ravages nerves in the brain and spine, and there is no known cure. But despite his diagnosis, Gleason is determined to lead a full life, be an active husband and father, and help others with ALS.

Following his diagnosis and the onset of symptoms, Gleason formed Team Gleason and focused on combating ALS on a greater scale. He engaged the technology industry to help make a tangible difference in the lives of those with the disease. Recognizing an opportunity to empower people through AI, innovators at Microsoft were eager to participate.

On the eve of Microsoft’s first annual hackathon, //oneweek, Gleason issued a challenge: Develop technology that helps people with ALS communicate and move more easily. That challenge inspired Eye Control for Windows 10, enabling people with limited mobility and speech to move their wheelchairs and communicate through an AI-assisted user interface and keyboard operated by eye movement.

In addition to helping and inspiring others diagnosed with ALS, Gleason had personal goals when he reached out to the technology industry. He wanted the ability to play with his young son, talk more easily with his wife, move his wheelchair on his own, and independently power his Microsoft Surface on and off.

Gleason’s //oneweek team achieved all four objectives with their hack for his wheelchair; they won the Hackathon, too. Now, using Eye Control and a Surface Pro 3 tablet, Gleason can input sentences, communicate with friends and family, and interact with his son from his wheelchair—just as he envisioned. Moreover, eye-tracking support has been built into Windows 10 to help countless others use their machines to stay active and connected.

“Until there is a medical cure for ALS,” Gleason says, “technology will be that cure.”

Each year, millions of people die from infectious diseases. And with 60 percent to 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases originating in animals, it’s difficult to identify how and when a new disease occurs—or where it’s spreading.

What if humans could prevent diseases such as the Ebola virus and bird flu before they become epidemics? That’s the goal of Microsoft Research, which is combining artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with drones, gene sequencing, and cloud computing to pinpoint how, when, and where infectious diseases occur.

Mosquitoes are the ultimate field biologists, taking blood samples from every animal they bite. By analyzing their DNA, researchers can identify both the animals that carry infectious diseases and the viruses they’re carrying. The problem is that mosquito populations change with the weather, so finding where they hide can be difficult. Moreover, a single sample can contain 100 million pieces of DNA, making the process of accurately detecting pathogens slow and cumbersome.

To identify emerging infectious diseases before they turn into outbreaks, Microsoft Research has launched Project Premonition. It uses Microsoft drones to find mosquito breeding grounds, robotic traps to gather specimens, and cloud-scale genomics powered by machine learning to search the DNA for pathogens.

Using drones and robotic traps, researchers can more easily find and catch mosquitoes. And with technologies such as AI, machine learning, and cloud computing, they can rapidly analyze hundreds of gigabytes of gene sequencing data. Thanks to Project Premonition, accurately detecting pathogens in a sample now takes less than 12 hours—versus the 30 days previously required.

Says Microsoft Researcher Ethan Jackson: “If we can detect viruses before they spread, we may someday stop outbreaks before they begin.”

For prospective parents, news that an unborn child has Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS) is truly devastating. Children who have this extremely rare congenital defect are essentially born with just half a heart—their survival requires at least two major surgeries six months apart. The period between the two operations is stressful and dangerous.

The infants require constant monitoring and typically, up to 25 percent of children born with HLHS die from complications before having the second surgery.

Now, instead of asking parents to keep detailed records of every aspect of their infant’s condition in a three-ring binder and provide a weekly update over the phone, doctors at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, are using a cloud-based app called CHAMP to view constantly updated information on every child under their care. CHAMP, which stands for Cardiac High Acuity Monitoring Program, enables parents to use a tablet computer to enter key vital signs such as heart rate, weight, and oxygen saturation into the app throughout the day.

The information is automatically analyzed in the cloud as soon as it is entered, and Children’s Mercy doctors are notified if there are any signs of abnormality. Parents can also press the “I’m concerned” button in the app and immediately page a nurse.

So far, the care team at Children’s Mercy Hospital has used CHAMP with 78 patients. The results have been dramatic: parents are less stressed and overwhelmed, the ability to monitor young patients in real time and adjust treatment has reduced the number of costly hospital readmissions, and most important, not one baby with HLHS under the care of Children’s Mercy Hospital doctors has died since the hospital began using the CHAMP system.

As a result, hospitals around the country that treat infants with HLHS have expressed strong interest in using the CHAMP app for their patients. And the cardiac specialists and medical technologists at Children’s Mercy Hospital who developed the app are exploring how it can be adapted for patients with other heart conditions who require long-term home monitoring.

If cloud computing is the fundamental enabler of the next great technology revolution, then internet access is the essential prerequisite for reaping the benefits and opportunities that the cloud will unleash.

For 4 billion people around the world, this is not an issue. But fairness and equity depend on ensuring that the 3.5 billion people who remain on the wrong side of the digital divide get access, too.

Nanyuki, Kenya—a town 125 miles north of Nairobi, where sending an email used to require a five-hour walk to the nearest wireless hot spot—offers hope that affordable access to the internet for all is achievable.

Mawingu (which means “cloud” in Swahili), uses technology that takes advantage of underutilized television broadcast spectrum known as TV white spaces to provide low-cost internet access to residents of Nanyuki and the surrounding countryside.

In its first three years, Mawingu has had a dramatic impact. By connecting county government offices, the county library, a Red Cross office, and a medical clinic to the outside world via the internet, Mawingu has improved access to public services and healthcare. At Gakawa Secondary School, one of five schools now connected to the internet, students have seen their scores improve on every single subject on the Kenya National Exam.

Mawingu also provides the infrastructure for new businesses such as Solar Cyber, an internet café that offers unlimited internet access for 3 U.S. dollars a month.

Run out of an old 20-foot shipping container, Solar Cyber is used by farmers who check market prices for their crops, students who do homework, and young entrepreneurs who connect with customers around the world.

The success of Mawingu has attracted international funding to take the technology to a national scale.

In September 2016, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government’s development finance institution, committed to financing a 4.1 million U.S. dollar loan to help Mawingu provide affordable, solar-powered wireless internet to communities throughout rural Kenya.

Research conducted by the World Bank a few years ago suggested that a 10 percent increase in internet access in Kenya would translate to a 1.38 percent jump in GDP.

As cloud computing drives a new generation of technology-driven innovations, the potential for growth could be even greater. This means the impact of TV white spaces in Nanyuki and other places like it where internet access has remained out of reach will truly be transformative.

One of the most pressing unanswered questions we face today is how to increase agricultural output sufficiently to meet the demand of a world that will need at least 60 percent more food by 2050 than we consume today.

One answer is widespread deforestation to greatly expand available agricultural land for large-scale industrial farming operations.

But there are significant tradeoffs, including loss of habitat and biodiversity, further disappearance of forests needed to mitigate climate change, and increased dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Eddie Rodriguez von der Becke thinks there’s a better way—help the world’s 500 million small family farms in developing countries become more efficient and more sustainable.

With this aim, he founded a software company in Argentina called Tambero that uses a cloud-based platform to connect tens of thousands of farmers in 150 countries to the information and analysis they need to optimize operations and increase production.

Designed for dairy farms, beef-cattle operations, and more, Tambero enables farmers to track everything from feed rations and milk production to animal weight, health, and reproductive cycles.

And it delivers automatic alerts that help farmers manage their animals and their land, know what dietary changes will improve output, and decide when to plant feed crops, wean calves, and inseminate cows.

Free for small farmers and available as a paid version for larger dairy operations and agricultural cooperatives, the platform is offered in 20 languages and includes information not just for cows but for goats, buffalo, sheep, alpacas, llamas, camels, and other animals that farmers around the world depend on for their livelihood.

According to Rodriguez von der Becke, small family farmers who use Tambero have increased milk production by an average of 200 percent.

About a dozen years ago, Taylor Shellfish, a Washington-based company and one of the largest oyster producers in the United States, began seeing a significant increase in the mortality rates for the seed oysters it transplanted to beds in bays and estuaries in the Puget Sound.

But it wasn’t until 2007 that the company learned the likely source of the problem: ocean acidification caused by the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. As mass die-offs began to occur on a regular basis in the years that followed, it soon became clear that the state’s 200 million U.S. dollar oyster industry faced a very real threat to its survival.

To help Taylor Shellfish and other shellfish farmers around the state figure out how to respond, researchers at the University of Washington created LiveOcean, a cloud-based forecasting model that predicts the acidity of water in Puget Sound and along the Washington coast up to seven days in advance.

Much like an advanced weather forecasting tool, LiveOcean incorporates massive amounts of data from a wide range of sources to provide a predictive model of the ocean’s currents and chemistry. Because high acidity prevents newly hatched oysters from forming their first shell, the ability to track acidity levels is helping oyster growers decide when to hatch oyster larvae and where to plant them so they have the best chance of growing to a harvestable size.

For the researchers who created LiveOcean, understanding how ocean acidification affects oysters is just the start. At least 30 percent of Puget Sound marine species are vulnerable to ocean acidification, and a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has highlighted the “urgent need to strengthen the science as a sound basis for decision-making and action” around the world when it comes to the potential impact of ocean acidification on the marine environment.

LiveOcean was designed specifically to take advantage of cloud computing so that anyone can use the forecasting model to understand how climate change will affect ocean currents and ocean chemistry.

Most people think of dyslexia as a reading problem caused by a tendency to invert the order of letters in words. But it is actually a neurodevelopmental disorder that encompasses a wide range of language problems related to word recognition, spelling, speech, writing, and comprehension. And it affects a lot of people.

Between 10 and 15 percent of school-age children are thought to be dyslexic. Worldwide, 1 billion people may have the disorder.

While there is no cure, those with dyslexia can learn strategies to help them cope. The earlier that children are diagnosed, the better they do in school.

But assessment is difficult and inexact. It can take years to determine that someone has dyslexia and many people are missed. It is estimated that only 5 percent of students in the United States with the disorder are diagnosed and receive assistance.

This may be about to change. Recognizing that unusual eye movement patterns when people read are an indicator of dyslexia, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, developed a cloud-based screening tool that tracks a person’s eyes when they read text on the screen of a laptop, tablet, or desktop computer. That information is sent to an analytic engine in the cloud that processes the data and returns a numerical result that indicates the likelihood that someone has dyslexia.

To test the tool in the real world, Karolinska Institute encouraged the researchers to launch a company called Optolexia. In 2015, Optolexia began a two-year pilot program in Jarfalla, Sweden, to assess 1,000 students.

The goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach and determine whether Optolexia can commercialize the tool so it can be used more broadly.

More important, researchers and educators hope to identify students as young as 8 who have dyslexia. Today in Sweden, where screening is common, it’s more typical for students to be diagnosed when they are between ages 13 and 15.

The company is also exploring how to adapt the tool to help identify people who might have other conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, ADHD, autism, and schizophrenia.

In a world where two-thirds of a billion people lack access to a reliable source of water and almost 1,000 children under the age of 5 die every day from diarrheal disease caused by poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water, it’s no exaggeration to say that water insecurity is one of humankind’s most pressing challenges. While it’s a hugely complex issue, finding additional safe water sources and ensuring that people can access safe water reliably will make a huge difference.

To help address these issues, REACH—an Oxford University research program that is working to improve water security for the poor—has developed a cloud-based technology that utilizes inexpensive sensors that can be attached to pumps handles in remote villages to provide critical information about the health of the local water supply.

The sensors use accelerometers and gyroscope sensors like those found in smart phones to detect small changes in the way a pump performs. Mobile communications components then transmit the data to be processed using machine learning algorithms that can predict if a pump is likely to fail so that repairs can be made quickly. Researchers believe this can have a significant impact in much of Africa, where 30 percent of pumps don’t work at any given time and a broken pump in a remote village can mean a 12 mile walk to find water.

Pump handle movements and vibrations can also reveal the level of water in shallow aquifers. The ability to assess groundwater depth will help planners understand when water supplies are low and how they fluctuate. And it will enable local and regional governments to make smarter decisions about investments in projects to develop new water sources and expand access to existing aquifers.

REACH has piloted the pump handle sensor in Kwale County, Kenya, where it has helped improve water security for more than 30,000 people. The organization is now working with UNICEF to develop a prototype for a low-cost predictive maintenance system that will help provide reliable access to safe water for millions of people across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.