What is the name of your organization?
Love Without Boundaries
What is the name of your solution?
LWB Cardiac Database
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
A centralized database connecting Ugandan children with heart disease to life-saving surgery through compassionate, equitable, and collaborative care.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Mukono, Uganda
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
UGA
What type of organization is your solution team?
Nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
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What specific problem are you solving?
In Uganda, an estimated 8,300 children are born each year with congenital heart defects, with over 2,000 requiring urgent medical intervention. Many others develop acquired heart conditions such as rheumatic heart disease. Yet the Ugandan Heart Institute can only treat a small percentage due to limited capacity, cost barriers, and long surgical waitlists. As a result, families are often told they must seek surgery abroad—typically in India—or face the devastating reality that their child may not survive.
This situation is especially overwhelming for low-income families without the means or knowledge to navigate complex medical referrals or multiple charity applications. Technology access is inconsistent, and many parents are left scrambling to find support, while others fall through the cracks entirely. At the same time, a lack of centralized coordination among nonprofits leads to duplicate efforts, inequitable access, and wasted resources.
Our solution addresses these systemic gaps by creating a centralized cardiac database that equitably connects children in need to life-saving surgery, regardless of literacy, income, or location. By streamlining referrals, enabling data collection, and coordinating charity involvement, we are working to ensure that no child is denied care simply because they were born in poverty.
What is your solution?
Our solution is a secure, centralized pediatric cardiac database designed to identify and support children in Uganda who need life-saving heart surgery. Families simply call a hotline, where a compassionate staff member collects their child’s medical information and enters it into the system—no internet or computer literacy required. Each case is reviewed daily by a Ugandan pediatric cardiologist.
The database allows us to track diagnoses, identify regional trends, and refer children for additional care, such as nutrition support or palliative services when needed. It also enables us to organize educational sessions for families to better understand their child’s condition, addressing the lack of time many doctors have to explain diagnoses.
Critically, this system allows vetted nonprofit partners to access cases directly and select children to sponsor—eliminating the need for families to apply to multiple organizations and reducing overlap and administrative costs. Our aim is to ensure that the right child receives care at the right time, through one compassionate, streamlined entry point.
It also allows for tracking children who travel abroad for surgery, creating Uganda’s first centralized record of outcomes from medical tourism and improving accountability and data-informed decision-making nationwide.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Our solution serves children in Uganda who are living with life-threatening heart conditions—many of whom will not survive without timely surgical intervention. These children and their families often live in poverty, far from urban centers, and face significant barriers to care. Most lack internet access, computer literacy, or the ability to navigate complex medical systems. As a result, children who are already medically vulnerable are further marginalized by inequities in access and information.
This database gives every family—regardless of income, location, or education—a single, compassionate entry point to seek help. With just one phone call, their child’s case is recorded, reviewed by a pediatric cardiologist, and made visible to a network of vetted organizations that sponsor heart surgeries. This “apply once” model removes the burden from parents to chase down help and ensures their child isn’t overlooked simply because they didn’t know where to turn.
The solution also brings hope. It enables outreach, tracks unmet needs, and lays the foundation for future government investment and improved in-country care. Until then, it increases the chances that each child—especially those who cannot wait—can receive life-saving surgery before it’s too late.