As of 2019, ORTEC works in collaboration with Amref Flying Doctors, owned by Amref Health Africa. Due to our collaboration, Amref can increase their impact on African healthcare by optimizing their business processes, making their projects quantifiable and the outcome of these projects visible. As part of the collaboration, some of ORTEC’s consultants recently visited Amref Ethiopia to work on two projects: one aimed at shaping strategies used in projects, and another to improve effectiveness and efficiency of their workforce. This article is a story by one of those consultants: Lotte van Hezewijk, Analytics Consultant.
Prior to departure to Ethiopia
At the beginning of ORTEC’s collaboration with Amref, some of my colleagues conducted an assessment on project selection. This uncovered the most relevant assignments, of which we selected two projects that were related to the Amref Ethiopia office:
- Creating a snapshot of healthcare needs of women in Ethiopia, given the ARAG* data over the years of 2017-2019
- Goal: to shape strategies and interventions used in projects*ARAG: Amref Representative Advisory Group – women all over Ethiopia were asked about their life and health
- Enabling the management team to make data-driven estimates about workforce requirements
- Goal: to improve effectiveness and efficiency of the workforce
Ethiopia, here we come!
In March 2020, my colleagues Edwin, Dasha and I visited the Amref Ethiopia office in Addis Ababa to work on the two projects described above. Prior to departure, we had already finished the data analysis for the first project and put our findings together in a presentation. For the second project, we already conducted some preliminary calls with employees from the Ethiopian office to get a feeling of- and insights in the issues. Being well prepared, we went to Schiphol Airport (which is a major partner of Amref, btw) on Saturday the 7th of March to board a plane for this new and exciting chapter of our collaboration: a visit to the Amref Ethiopia office to further work on our projects.
A brief cultural deep dive
Upon arrival in Ethiopia, we were amazed by the friendliness and helpfulness of the people. After making some final touches to the preparation of our work for the coming week, we had some time to explore Addis Ababa and get to know the local people and culture. We got to know the importance of coffee here, as Ethiopia is the home of the coffee arabica plant, providing 16% of the population with a livelihood. After enjoying some delicious coffee and tea in a local ‘shop’, a taxi driver showed us his beloved city and explained more about the people, locations and culture. After this amazing day, we were very excited to start our work.
Decisions based on data instead of gut feeling
In the first days, we had lots of conversations with the management team, project staff and support staff to understand their work, and to find out what factors influence the level of effort (LOE) they need to support a project.
We got access to piles of data, including complete budgets of all active projects, as well as the estimates of how employees spent their time divided over the projects. Based on these estimates, we knew the input (the attributes of the project) and the required output (level of effort of the employees). For all of of the workforce roles, we aim to create a regression model that predicts the level of effort based on the attributes of the project. For one of the roles (the accountant), we already implemented this during our visit. From this model, we found that the accountant’s level of effort is mainly influenced by the budget he/she must control, as well as by other partners involved in the project.
“Previously we’ve mainly used our heart in decision-making, and this is the head part. Let’s use both now!” – Amref Ethiopia
The end of a week of very meaningful work
The inspiring visit to Debre Birhan concluded our week of very meaningful work in Ethiopia. It was incredible to see the passion of the employees of Amref to create lasting health change in Africa, and to work on providing healthcare to everyone, even in the remotest areas of the country. It has been a big privilege to be part of this sustainable project and to help improving the world using our passion for mathematics and knowledge. I look forward to continuing this collaboration! – Lotte van Hezewijk, Analytics Consultant at ORTEC (left on the below picture)
