International Rescue Committee
International Rescue Committee uses Claude to turn paper health records into offline dashboards in Burkina Faso
The International Rescue Committee piloted Claude Enterprise in 2025 so health staff in Burkina Faso could build offline dashboards from facility Excel files. In pilot surveys, half of users reported saving four or more hours a month. The story comes from Anthropic's own customer pages.
Key figures
Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.
30%
Share of surveyed pilot users saving two to three hours, in addition to the half saving four or more1
under 30 minutes
Time for one program user to prepare analysis and slides for senior management, which previously took a full day (a single user's account)1
What it took
The problem
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) runs health care in some of the hardest places to work. Most of its health facilities belong to national health ministries, so the IRC cannot choose what data is collected. In much of sub-Saharan Africa the numbers start in paper registers. Staff copy totals into Excel by hand, and by the time anyone sees a trend the window to act may have closed.
What they built
The IRC used Claude Enterprise to create a dashboard template as one small HTML file. A staff member drags a facility's Excel file into it and gets charts, with no internet and no coding. The dashboards cover the Burkina Faso team's list of core indicators, more than 15 health and reproductive health measures. The data loaded is aggregate facility data, not individual patient records, and the IRC says it is not sent externally.
How they did it
The IRC treated it as an experiment. It asked six countries, and Burkina Faso volunteered first. A technology lead and the regional measurement advisor made the first template in the Claude chat window, without Claude Code. After that, the measurement advisor changed dashboards in plain language when facility teams asked. The IRC says the pilot ran about six months from onboarding to active use, with an in-kind licence from Anthropic.
Results
In pilot surveys, every health and measurement respondent reported working more efficiently. Half saved four or more hours a month and another 30% saved two to three hours. One program user now prepares management analysis in under 30 minutes instead of a full day. The IRC says teams now plan from all core indicators rather than two or three. Nutrition and economic recovery teams have asked for the same approach, and dashboards are planned for other West and Central African countries.
What to copy
Start with a narrow data problem where the user group can adapt the tool themselves, keep data local if connectivity or privacy is a concern, and put guidance on use in place before demand spreads.
All reported figures
| Measure | Figure | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Time saved per month by half of surveyed pilot users | 4+ hours per month1 | |
| Share of surveyed pilot users saving two to three hours, in addition to the half saving four or more | 30%1 | |
| Time for one program user to prepare analysis and slides for senior management, which previously took a full day (a single user's account) | under 30 minutes1 | |
| Time to create HTML dashboards in Claude, headline figure on the IRC Q&A page | 20 minutes2 | |
| Core health and reproductive health indicators covered by the offline dashboards | more than 151 |
Lessons for your project
Change one variable. The IRC left data collection to the ministries of health alone and changed only how the data is visualized.
Design for the worst connection. A single light HTML file that staff fill by dragging in an Excel file works with no internet and no coding.
Let local specialists adjust the tool in plain language. The regional measurement advisor updated dashboards on request without engineering help.
Plan governance early. Nutrition and economic recovery teams asked for the same approach, and the IRC's measurement advisor says it is now focusing on guidance for security, reliability and integrity.
Caveats
- Both sources are Anthropic customer pages quoting IRC staff. No independent source confirms the figures, and the survey sample size is not given.
- The pages carry no date. The main page says the pilot was in 2025 and cites data from January to May 2026, so only the year is used as the deployed date.
- Burkina Faso's pilot ran with an in-kind licence from Anthropic, so licence cost is not part of the picture. The pages give no cost or team size.
- The under 30 minutes figure is one program user's account, not an average. The Q&A page's 20 minutes figure is a headline stat with no explanation of how it was measured.
- The pages also report health findings, such as a rise in STI consultations and a spike in respiratory infections. These are what the dashboards showed about patients, not measured effects of the AI, and are not counted as results.
- The pages name Claude but not a version. The IRC says the dashboards use aggregate facility data, not patient records, and that data stays local.
Sources
- The International Rescue Committee turns fragmented health data into faster decisions with Claude
Anthropic · Undated · Vendor case study · claude.com
- A conversation with IRC on turning frontline health data into action in Burkina Faso
Anthropic · Undated · Vendor case study · claude.com
Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.