When a financial setback forced him to pause his final year of university, Dan Okello didn’t quit – he recalibrated. Today, as head of systems and data analytics at C-Care Uganda, he leads a digital transformation, showing how resilience and a deep understanding of healthcare can drive lasting change.
In 2015, while many of his classmates were planning graduation parties, Dan Kairu Okello was staring at an uncertain future. Just a semester shy of completing his computer science degree, his sponsor pulled out, leaving him without the means to graduate.
“I didn’t have the luxury to just sit and hope. I needed to find a way forward and fast,” he says. Dan, now the head of systems and data analytics of C-Care Uganda, leant on his skills and landed a programming job at Adroit Solutions.
It wasn’t a dream start, but it was a door that opened to a larger world. He worked for two years before raising enough money to return and complete his studies. “That journey alone taught me what resilience is,” he continues.
Since then, Dan’s journey has been anything but ordinary. He has tackled problems most people avoid and built digital bridges where none existed. At Granule Pulse, he helped farmers move from scattered to connected and has brought practical tech to government agencies like Nema and the Uganda Investment Authority. NGOs such as Sasakawa Global 2000 and Straight Talk Foundation have leant on him to stretch their impact, while private sector names like Jesa Group and regional universities have trusted him to plug the leaks in time, money and trust.
“I have implemented scalable systems and fostered data-driven decision-making to achieve organisational goals,” he says, summarising the core of his work.
At C-Care Uganda, he has been at the forefront of change in healthcare systems. The company, part of a Mauritius-based group, operates four hospitals and 19 clinics across Uganda. “We see about 52,000 patients month-on-month,” Dan says.
Streamlining processes
When he joined, his role was to implement ERP systems. He did that and more. Within a year, he was promoted to systems manager and not long after, he was tapped to lead a data analytics transformation that would eventually be adopted across the region.
“They had hired consultants for a year to try and do data analytics in Uganda, but it failed,” he says. “So when the deputy CFO visited and saw analytics running, he asked who had built it. I told him it was me. He asked me three or four times like, ‘who helped you?’ And I told him again, it was me,” he says with a laugh.
Dan was quickly flown to Mauritius to replicate the success. “I was given a small assignment just to prove that I was the one who had built it. And I did in 15 minutes. The next time he came, he was asking me which football club I support. It felt like I had passed the interview,” he chuckles.
He ended up building analytics not just for Uganda, but for the broader group. “I built all the KPIs for analytics in six months. I’m talking about discharge, utilisation, occupancy, revenue, supply chain dashboards, debtor dashboards, clinical dashboards, marketing dashboards and more,” he explains.
One of his standout achievements has been streamlining the hospital discharge process. “Previously, it was about seven or eight hours. Today it’s gone down to about four hours. And we’re measuring this in near real-time with dashboards updating every two hours,” he says. “Previously decisions were based on gut feelings. Now it’s data. The data is visible. People are using the systems. The adoption rate is close to 100 percent.”
This new approach has had ripple effects on everything from budgeting to supply chain management. “Our forecast is based on data. Our demand is based on our buying and supplier fulfillment. We even use data to decide which vendor to leave if their lead time is too high or their fulfillment rate is poor,” he says.
But transforming systems isn’t just about code. “For this to work properly, you need the buy-in of stakeholders,” he explains. “Otherwise, you’re simply going to put the system on a broken process flow. One of the biggest nightmares is trying to enforce a global best practice when people locally have a different, less effective way of doing things,” he adds.
Finding purpose in community
He uses doctor and room scheduling as an example. “Some of our doctors come 30 minutes late or overstay their time. And it causes problems. The next doctor comes in on time and doesn’t have a room. It messes up utilisation.” To solve this, he digitised schedules and built dashboards to track room usage. “It’s a typical computer science problem. You want to know how your rooms are being used. If you’re only scheduling them for half the day, you have no business talking about expanding until you optimise that first,” Dan adds.
All of this, he says, feeds into bigger strategic decisions. “What specialty to hire, where to open a clinic, whether it's in a business or residential area. The data tells us,” he explains.
Dan leads a small but high-performing team of eight IT professionals who support 19 clinics, some as far as 500 km away from Kampala. “We centrally sit in one place and manage everything remotely,” he says. “We use a helpdesk tool that lets us track issues and even helps us decide if we need to hire based on ticket volumes.”
When it comes to AI, Dan is enthusiastic but cautious. “We are starting to use AI for low-end tasks like scheduling and note-taking. But we’re careful not to plug in sensitive patient data into open-source models. AI is strong in reading radiology images, and it can help with diagnostics, but it needs reinforcement learning. We’re not there yet,” he explains.
He envisions a future where AI powers virtual doctors. “A chatbot could be your virtual doctor. You go to the site, you answer a few questions about your symptoms and based on trained data, it suggests diagnoses or recommends tests. That’s the direction, but it has to be done responsibly, especially in our context,” he cautions.
Outside work, Dan finds joy and purpose in community. “I’m a Rotarian, but long before that, I supported a football team in Uganda’s regional league. It’s about 330 km from Kampala. These are young people who could have been on the streets. But the game is changing their lives. I support them financially and go to see them play when I can,” he reveals.
Asked whether this spirit of service comes from Rotary, he smiles. “No, I was already doing that before I joined Rotary. It’s just something I love,” he remarks.
