Kaelo
/ka.ˈe.lo/ · Setswana · "to care for, to nurture, to look after"
Botswana imports nearly all of its medicines. Getting them from a port to a patient in a rural clinic, on time and unexpired, is a logistics problem before it is a clinical one.
Kaelo exists to help close that gap.
What we do
Kaelo is an antimicrobial supply chain optimization platform built for the Government of Botswana. It uses advanced mathematical models, including robust optimization and adaptive (affine) decision rules, to determine how medicines should be procured, stored, and distributed across the country's 619 health facilities.
The system accounts for demand uncertainty, transport constraints, procurement costs, and the complex tiered network of warehouses, hospitals, clinics, and health posts that cover 2.4M people across 18 health districts.
How it works
Robust optimization
Instead of assuming a single forecast is correct, the model optimizes against the worst-case demand scenario within a plausible uncertainty set. Decisions that hold up under the hardest month hold up under every month.
Affine decision rules
Rather than fixing every order up front, Kaelo learns a linear policy: "order x if we've observed demand y." This keeps the math tractable while letting the system adapt as real demand unfolds month by month.
Team & partners
- Dr. Bartolomeo Stellato (advisor)
- Mr. Lesego Busang
- Mr. Stanley Mapiki
- Mr. Tiro Molefe
- Dr. Khumo Seipone
- Ministry of Health, Botswana
- Central Medical Stores
