Impact Bytes: HelpMeSee Honored with the 2024 Splunkie Change Agent Award

This article is part of Splunk’s new Impact Bytes series, which highlights customers, grantees, and employees creating positive change in our local and global communities.

Each year, the Splunkie Change Agent award honors customers using Splunk to harness the power of data for good, driving positive change and improving the lives of others.

During the June 11 opening keynote at Splunk’s .conf24 in Las Vegas, Splunk proudly announced HelpMeSee as the 2024 Change Agent, honoring the nonprofit’s groundbreaking work to expand access to life-changing vision surgery. Marin Todorov, Senior Director of Technology Operations, accepted the award on behalf of the HelpMeSee team.

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^{Left to right: Marin Todorov, Senior Director of Technology Operations, HelpMeSee and Toni Pavlovich, Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer, Splunk}

“Our mission is simple: we’re trying to cure blindness,” says Marin. Every dollar and cent counts, and the fact that Splunk donated an Enterprise license to us makes a tremendous difference for HelpMeSee. But for us, it’s not just about the financial value of the donation. It’s also a donation that reflects our organizations’ shared passion to make vision surgery available to those who lack access today.”

How HelpMeSee Helps Restore Vision Around the World

Across the globe, 100 million people are blind or visually impaired due to cataracts. While cataract surgery is a low-cost and routine medical procedure performed thousands of times daily, too many people lack access to vision care and life-altering surgery. That not only diminishes their quality of life but can also threaten their livelihood. Compromised vision can also create consequences for others, such as reducing the workforce, traffic accidents or a young family member becoming a full-time caretaker. Poverty exacerbates the issue since it is both a cause and consequence of poor eye health.

HelpMeSee is making a global impact by training ophthalmologists and cataract specialists in manual small-incision cataract surgery, a cost-effective procedure for resource-constrained settings. It also trains medical professionals in other procedures, such as phacoemulsification, suturing, and anterior vitrectomy. Their distributed team offers instructor-led, simulation-based courses at sites including India, China, Madagascar, Mexico, the United States, and France. With every surgeon HelpMeSee trains, they expand access to a proven surgery that transforms lives.

The Power of Data

Marin learned about Splunk through his work in the corporate sector. When he began working with HelpMeSee, he recognized its potential to provide data-fueled insights – from monitoring eye surgery simulators to monitoring the surrounding IT infrastructure. Splunk’s customized dashboards consolidate multiple platforms, allowing HelpMeSee to troubleshoot issues quickly. “For us, it’s not just about the power of Splunk technology, but also how we integrate it into our ecosystem to make it a natural part of our workflows,” says Marin.

HelpMeSee aims to train over 30,000 surgeons in the next five years. Splunk is proud to support that continued expansion through our technology and contribute to the success of an organization that is the epitome of a change agent.

Learn more about HelpMeSee. You can also follow HelpMeSee on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.