How NorthStar Anesthesia built a scheduling app for a workforce of 3,000 clinicians in weeks

Summary

NorthStar Anesthesia needed a better way for roughly 3,000 physicians and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) to coordinate shifts, because its commercial scheduling platform hid colleagues’ time-off data and its dashboard pilot was not mobile-friendly. Synaptiq built a React TypeScript scheduling app with one software engineer and deployed it through Databricks Apps in a few weeks, using the existing Databricks data foundation, governance, and Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on. The app provides color-coded views by clinician type, facility selection, day/week/month calendars, shift notes, search and filtering, and time-off visibility, with data refreshing every 30 minutes. Daily unique users rose from 75–80 at launch to more than 110 as the first clinician group migrated, while users reported less stress; planned additions include natural-language queries, push notifications, and automated staffing reports.

Context

Clinicians rotate across facilities, overnight shifts, and on-call assignments, often without steady computer access. NorthStar’s commercial scheduling platform deliberately hid colleagues’ time-off data, complicating shift trades, while an initial dashboard pilot did not provide the mobile-friendly experience users needed.

Approach / What changed

Synaptiq used the existing Databricks data foundation, governance configuration, and Microsoft Entra ID SSO to build and deploy a React TypeScript app through Databricks Apps. One software engineer delivered the application in a few weeks, including calendar views, clinician and facility filtering, shift notes, search, time-off visibility, and 30-minute data refreshes.

Takeaways

• The application exposes colleagues’ time-off data that the commercial scheduling platform hides, addressing a specific obstacle to shift trading.
• Databricks Apps enabled reuse of NorthStar’s existing data and governance setup, while Microsoft Entra ID SSO extended access across the clinical workforce without new infrastructure.
• Daily unique users increased from 75–80 at launch to more than 110 during the first wave of migration, and users wrote that the app reduced stress in their scheduling workflows.

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