Highlights from ORAHS 2025 in Trondheim, Norway.

By Klara Engelbrecht and Hannah Callaghan

From 6–11 July, five members of the Department of Logistics at Stellenbosch University (Linke Potgieter, Isabelle Nieuwoudt, Kurt Marais, Hannah Callaghan, and Klara Engelbrecht) had the privilege of attending the Operations Research Applied to Health Systems (ORAHS) conference in Trondheim, Norway. This event was hosted by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). A special thank you goes out to the local organising committee: Joe Viana, Carl Andersson, Thomas Bovim, Aina Goday, and Anders Gullhav.

We were welcomed on Sunday evening with drinks and finger foods to meet our fellow attendees from all around the world. We were pleasantly surprised to meet two fellow South Africans from North-West University - Siedine Coetzee and Joke Buhrmann, making us a group of seven South Africans!

Pictures from the welcome event.

Monday was started with a plenary session presented by Nadia Lahrichi on four practical projects she has done.  She positioned them on a two-dimensional scale, evaluating both their level of implementation and their methodological complexity or significance, two aspects that are both essential in operations research.

Later in the morning, Klara got to present her honours project on an automated doctor rostering decision support tool for Knysna Hospital under the supervision of Prof Linke Potgieter.

Klara Engelbrecht presenting on her research.

In the afternoon, Tabea Brandt presented a patient-data generation tool that has been launched, enabling researchers to test models with realistic data while still allowing for publication. Guillaume Lamé gave a talk on a systematic review he conducted, that highlighted the missing reporting of implementation in literature, and asked why researchers struggle with implementation, or write so little on it.

Monday evening the conference attendees were invited to watch a beautiful organ concert at the Nidaros Cathedral. This cathedral was built beginning in 1070 to memorialize the burial place of Olav II, the patron saint of Norway.

The outside and inside of the Nidaros Cathedral.

On Tuesday morning, Prof. Potgieter and Dr. Nieuwoudt presented a project currently underwork at Stellenbosch University on inventory management for mobile clinics in the Witzenberg region in South Africa. This presentation brought light to the need for better planning in medical services in rural areas.

Prof. Potgieter and Dr. Nieuwoudt presenting on their research.

In the same session, Prof. Angel Ruiz presented a talk on mobile clinics in Mexico, highlighting similarities in their use across countries, but with a focus on routing rather than inventory management.

The following session focused on posters, with six projects on display. Attendees could walk around, ask questions, and have in-depth discussions with the researchers about their work. Topics ranged from predictive modelling in organ donation management to reusable simulation frameworks for emergency departments.

In the afternoon, Hannah presented work from her master’s thesis on the investigation of health policies in childhood obesity using system modelling. Her talk featured very interesting but concerning facts about the food consumption that takes place in children raised in South Africa.

Hannah Callaghan presenting on her research.

In the same session, Matthew Pentecost presented a project on using system dynamics to assess the availability of emergency care at a regional level, which was a project inspired by a poor experience he had in real life while using these emergency care services in the Netherlands.

In the evening, all ORAHS attendees were split into five groups, and were taken on walking city tours to learn about some of the history of Trondheim. This tour gave deep insight into the city's rich history and beautiful architecture.

The main building at NTNU.

Wednesday, ORAHS attendees took a break from research and spent the day at the Port of Trondheim, where we sat in saunas, took cold plunges in the Nordic waters, and rode on speedboats along the fjord.

Conference participants kitted up and ready to go on the speedboats.

The Thursday was spent at the St. Olav's University Hospital, where talks took place in the medical students’ classrooms. The day was called “Practitioners’ Day”, where a lot of discussions involved collaborating research with stakeholders directly involved in medical systems. The session started with a plenary session by Lina Grännö about transforming healthcare delivery through data-driven organisational development and strategic planning, where she presented projects that she worked on with a hospital in Sweden.

Another poster session was held in the afternoon, showcasing the same posters as Tuesday, this time giving practitioners the opportunity to evaluate them. The session was followed by a panel discussion featuring Birger Henning Endreseth, Kjartan Klyve, Gréanne Leeftink, and Øystein Døhl, all practitioners working in hospitals or as consultants.

During the last session of the day, Kurt Marais presented work from his PhD on constructing a depression-specific polarity lexicon for sentiment analysis of social media posts. His talk sparked interesting questions from the audience about how mental health is portrayed in the media.

Kurt Marais presenting on his research.

The conference dinner took place that evening at the Clarion Hotel, where we were treated with traditional Norwegian starters, mains and desserts. After dinner, attendees made their way to the rooftop of the hotel to watch the sunset and enjoy each other’s company. Note that this sunset picture was taken at 23:15!

Beautiful sunset over the fjord.

The week finished Friday morning with majority of presentations being on simulation projects based on different departments of hospitals. Finally, some highlights of the conferences were shared and the destination and dates for the next conference were announced.

In all, ORAHS 2025 provided a fantastic environment for health care research collaboration. The conference may be small, but this allowed for easy networking and greater connection. For researchers that attend the conference every year, this event is seen as a family get together. It was incredibly special to be a part of it this year. I would highly recommend anyone working in health care to attend ORAHS. Next year’s conference will be held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, so keep on the lookout for more details!