The Global Fund is an international financing organisation started in 2002 to fight AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria.

SAP today announced that in addition to committing $4 million over a period of four years to the Global Fund, through its partnership with (RED), SAP technology is helping the organisation more simply understand how its financial investments are being used for disease prevention and treatment.

SAP is also a founding member of the Global Fund’s Innovation Coalition, which brings together private sector organisations to tackle significant issues related to the organisation’s mission of fighting preventable and treatable disease, such as logistics and education.

“SAP is all about helping organisations simplify complexity so they can do anything and it doesn’t get more complicated than fighting persistent and deadly diseases around the world,” said Pfungwa Serima, chief executive officer, SAP Africa.

“By providing our technology innovation and leadership, we can help the Global Fund extend their reach and effectiveness. This partnership shows how technology can revolutionise the healthcare industry and save lives,” he added. 

The Global Fund acts essentially as a global public-private partnership that funds local organisations across 140 countries engaged in the fight against these three preventable and treatable diseases. In 2013, they disbursed $3.9 billion worldwide, including private sector money generated by (RED), to create sustainable funding for the fight against AIDS in Africa.

In addition to providing a charitable grant, SAP knew it could significantly increase its impact by contributing technology. With SAP analytics technology and services, the Global Fund is now using grant management dashboards that provide greater visibility into programmatic, financial and management performance indicators, one of the organisation’s biggest challenges.

The dashboards will work as follows. Country coordinators for the Global Fund determine which organisations will be granted aid and set goals for their geographic area. The dashboard allows managers to see at a glance how much money has been disbursed. They can then drill down to see which groups received money and examine more closely how much recipients have received versus how much has been spent. The dashboards also allow managers to review the financial data against critical targets like maintaining an adequate stock of particular drugs and other supplies; or how effectively they are using antiretroviral therapy (ART) to reduce the viral load of HIV positive patients.

The pilot phase for testing the dashboards began in February 2014. They are now live in six countries: Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Dominican Republic, Laos, Uganda, and South Africa, and currently being evaluated for roll out in additional countries.

“We would like to thank SAP for their tremendous support and collaboration to fight AIDS, TB and malaria” said Mark Dybul, executive director, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. “We’re very excited about launching the innovation coalition and welcome the meeting this week in Berlin to engage with top German companies and government officials. SAP has demonstrated again its global leadership by creating new innovative solutions to improve the health of people around the world.”

Recognising the immense impact that strategic innovation can make to its operations, the Global Fund is launching an innovation coalition of leading private sector companies from a variety of industries, academic institutions and foundations to provide expertise that supports the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria. SAP is a founding member of the coalition, and strongly supporting the launch of this cross- industry effort. Member organisations will each bring their unique domain expertise and work together to collectively support the Global Fund’s unique challenges.

Logistics management is the first issue the coalition will attempt to solve holistically for the Global Fund, such as complex supply and demand management and ensuring medications are distributed to patients before expiration. SAP technology, in partnership with expertise from other companies in industries like transportation or insurance, will unite to try and ensure a more effective method of supplying and distributing medicine.