Tools
Services
WorkKompendioAbout
ende
Octinex Pulse

Pulse plans operating rooms, teams and recovery beds together. Its proposals keep the rules: who is qualified, who is free, turnover times and legal breaks.

  • In a pilot at a large MVZ in Berlin
  • German interface
  • Laptop, tablet and phone on one plan

A personal project, built in my own time.

The day the plan breaks

A spreadsheet can hold an OR plan. It can’t check one.

  1. 07:30

    The plan is printed. Three rooms, every role named. It looks fine.

  2. 10:15

    A nurse calls in sick. The stand-in isn’t trained for knee cases, and nobody notices until the case starts.

  3. 13:30

    The morning ran late. The team in OP 1 hasn’t had a break, and the afternoon is still full.

  4. 16:00

    The recovery beds are full. The last patient waits in the OR, and the room can’t be turned over.

Pulse turns it round: the rules are part of the plan.

Qualifications, turnover times, breaks and recovery beds are checked when the plan is made, and the day reports back while it runs. Nobody has to hold them in their head.

How Pulse works, step by step

  1. 01 · A request arrives

    Every case starts with its urgency.

    Reception enters the procedure, the urgency and the window it must happen in: A within two days, B this week, C elective. Open requests wait in one list, and overdue ones say so.

    Gone a waiting list in a notebook

  2. 02 · The week is proposed

    Pulse proposes a week. A person books it.

    For each waiting case Pulse looks for a room that runs the specialty, a free surgeon and a gap that keeps the turnover time. It leaves out any slot that would fill a room past 95 % or cost someone their legal break.

    Gone puzzling the week together by hand

  3. 03 · The team fills in

    Only people who may do the job.

    Every role is filled from people who are qualified for that specialty, present that day and free at that time. Pulse spreads the heaviest work across the team, then plans the breaks, with a colleague stepping in where needed. A role it can’t fill stays visibly open.

    Gone checking every name against the rota

  4. 04 · The morning brief

    Each day opens with what needs doing.

    Open roles, rooms likely to run late, a recovery room that will get tight, new sick notes, anyone without a proper break: most urgent first. In the afternoon the evening brief does the same for tomorrow.

    Gone the morning phone round

  5. 05 · The room reports

    The OR tells recovery before the patient arrives.

    The team taps each step on a tablet: patient in, incision, suture, done. Near the end the tablet asks how long the surgeon still needs, and the recovery room can reserve a bed in time.

    Gone phoning recovery to ask for a bed

  6. 06 · The day is confirmed

    The real times teach the plan.

    Confirming the day shows every case with its planned times already filled in; only the differences need changing. From those real times Pulse learns how long each procedure takes, and the next forecasts use them.

    Gone writing the day up for the records

  7. 07 · What if?

    Ask before it happens.

    How long until the waiting list is cleared? What if a room were added? Pulse places every open request with the same engine that books real cases, so the answer is a plan, not a guess.

    Gone a separate spreadsheet for “what if”

Pulse proposes only plans that keep the rules. People still decide.

That’s control here: knowing at 07:30 that the day can run, and seeing at 10:15 what a sick call changes, before the case starts.

Try it

Someone calls in sick. See who can step in.

Today’s teams

  • Dr. Adler

    Surgeon · OP 1

  • Dr. Brandt

    Surgeon · OP 2

  • Dr. Celik

    Anaesthetist · OP 1

  • Dr. Dorn

    Anaesthetist · OP 2

  • Emma K.

    Scrub nurse · OP 1

  • Finn S.

    Scrub nurse · OP 2

  • Jonas W.

    Circulator · OP 1

  • Kai L.

    Circulator · OP 2

Tuesday

  • OP 1Hand surgery · 08:00–12:40

    • Carpal tunnel
    • Trigger finger
    • Ganglion
    • Dr. Adler · Surgeon
    • Dr. Celik · Anaesthetist
    • Emma K. · Scrub nurse
    • Jonas W. · Circulator

  • OP 2Orthopaedics · 08:00–15:30

    • Knee arthroscopy
    • Shoulder
    • Meniscus
    • Dr. Brandt · Surgeon
    • Dr. Dorn · Anaesthetist
    • Finn S. · Scrub nurse
    • Kai L. · Circulator

Runs in your browser on made-up data, with a simplified form of the rule Pulse’s “report an absence” uses: the stand-in must be qualified for the role and the specialty, present that day and free at that time. Pulse suggests; a person confirms.

Who it’s for

One plan, on every screen in the house.

  • Laptop

    OR planners

    Requests, rooms, teams and breaks for the whole week, with a morning and an evening brief.

  • Tablet

    OR and recovery teams

    Steps tapped in the room, beds and discharge checks in recovery. Big targets for gloved hands, and every drag also works as a tap.

  • Phone

    Surgeons and staff

    Their own day, week and confirmed hours. Surgeons see their cases and can ask for a change.

  • Screen

    Management

    Utilisation, first-case punctuality, planning accuracy and the backlog trend. Costs stay estimates until the practice enters its own rates.

Every device reads the same plan, and changes reach the others within seconds. Two devices can’t overwrite each other unnoticed: the later change is refused, and that device says so.

Privacy on shared screens

A patient’s name is never on screen by default.

  • One click, 45 seconds.

    Four views can show a name: the case, the search, the waiting list and the call list. One click, and after 45 seconds it’s taken off the page again, not blurred. Everywhere else the name isn’t on the page at all. Each patient also carries a Pulse number: Z- and six digits.

  • Covered until someone unlocks it.

    The recovery-room screen hides identifying details until a person enters their PIN, and covers them again after 30 seconds without input.

  • Relatives see a symbol.

    The waiting-room board shows a picture symbol and a rough state: preparing, in the OR, in recovery, home soon. No name, no number, no procedure.

How it’s built

For the people who’ll ask how.

  • 1,521commits since July 2026
  • 709pull requests merged
  • 1HTML file, about 48,000 lines, no build step
  • 0dependencies in the sync server

Figures as of 12 October 2026.

Why one file? Pulse opens in any browser without installing anything, keeps working when the network doesn’t, and runs in networks that block outside scripts: the fonts and the export library are inside the file. A check on every pull request makes sure every script in the file still parses.

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • AWS Lambda
  • DynamoDB
  • html2canvas
  • JSON Schema
  1. Pulse in the browserone HTML file · laptop, tablet, phone · keeps working offline
  2. Sync serverNode built-ins only, no dependencies · a version check on every write · keeps the last 200 versions
  3. The planone file on the practice’s own machine

Or AWS Lambda + DynamoDBthe same contract, for practices that don’t host it themselves

  • Every proposal is filtered, not just flagged: the room must run the specialty, turnover times hold, no room goes past 95 %, and nobody loses a legal break.
  • A check on every change refuses the files Pulse keeps its data in, to keep patient data out of the repository.
Where it stands

From first commit to daily use.

  1. July 2026First commit
  2. Sept 2026Version 1.0 in daily use
  3. Oct 2026Version 1.1, the first update
  4. NowIn a pilot at a large MVZ in Berlin
Write to me

Want to talk about Pulse?

Whether you’re hiring, run operating rooms that could use it, or want to back it: one message reaches me.

I use what you send here only to answer you. Privacy policy

The other tools