How OSO Schedule started

How it started

In my role as Associate Program Director at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), I support our chiefs in building the block schedule for over 100 residents every year. We used an online survey asking residents their preferences that was then interpreted into a digital spreadsheet. We then spent 100-plus hours of time piecing something together only to have residents still unhappy with the end result. Each year I saw a frustrated chief that had to take an email break for a few days. There was also one year where I had a concussion and couldn’t stare at a screen more than 10 minutes before getting a migraine, which resulted in a particularly unhappy year among our residents. There had to be a better way.

Tyler saw it from the other side. His wife was a resident (and soon-to-be chief) and he’d watch her go through that ridiculously long survey knowing that there’s no way they could all get satisfied. As a software engineer, he saw this challenge as an opportunity and decided to request a meeting with the Program Office in the fall of 2024 to pitch an idea.

As I would later share with Tyler, “You had me at hello.”

Over the coming months we met in the office, over dinner, and online leading to the first iteration of OSO Schedule which we piloted in Spring 2025. Whereas only about 70 percent of requests were able to be satisfied in the past by hand, we were able to get over 90 percent of requests satisfied that first year! The amount of frustration from residents dropped dramatically and over the next academic year call-outs went down by 20 percent. Chiefs and PDs spend less time creating the schedule, less emotional energy addressing resident disappointment and frustration, and well-being improved among both chiefs and residents.

Based on the success of that first year’s pilot at CHLA, we connected again that summer and decided to turn it into a company. Our priority is to incorporate program rules and resident requests all into one easy-to-use software. We teach programs how to input, modify, and reiterate schedule rules to make changes immediately without having to wait. We built this software with PDs and Chiefs in mind because we are a PD and (husband of a) chief. Let us support your team as well!