Pen, Paper, and 30 Radiographers Walk Into a Hospital...
Or: How watching my wife come home exhausted at 7 PM every night led me down a rabbit hole that's consuming my life in the best possible way
Hi. I'm Adriaan, and I write software that tests equipment used on satellites 🛰️. Now I'm building software to help radiographers navigate their lives.
If that sounds like a weird career pivot, well... welcome to my blog. This is where I'm documenting the journey of building something that actually matters, one late-night coding session at a time.
The 7 PM Problem
Many evenings, only around 7 PM, my wife gets home from her job as a radiographer. She's exhausted. Not just from the work itself – which involves helping diagnose everything from broken bones to taking the x-rays of gangsters – but from a schedule that seems designed by chaos theory itself.
Some weeks she works late Friday, then the entire weekend, then early Monday. Other weeks, she's working nightshift, and gone for 4 nights. Planning anything – dinner with friends, a weekend trip, even knowing when we can have dinner together – becomes an exercise in frustration, since we can only do one week in advance.
One night, after a particularly chaotic schedule scramble, the question came up: "Who makes these schedules anyway?"
That's when I learned about The Chief.
The Heroic Chief with Excel Sheets
There's someone in her department who spends 35-40 hours every three months creating overtime schedules.
Let that sink in. An entire work week. Every quarter. With pen and paper and excel sheets galore.
This person is juggling:
- 30+ staff members
- 210+ scheduling preferences per month
- Legal requirements
- Fairness (trying not to stick the same poor soul with every Friday late shift to also do a night shift that weekend)
- Overtime calculations
- Last-minute swaps
- And probably their own sanity
They're doing heroic work with stone-age tools. And they're not alone – this is happening in hospitals everywhere.
From Satellites to Schedules
Here's the thing about me: I'm an engineer with a master's in electrical and electronic engineering. I spent the last 18 months writing test software for a satellite component production company, making sure satellite components wouldn't fail in space.
I've also spent an embarrassing amount of time on passion projects, like trying to make my gate open automatically using Bluetooth proximity detection (spoiler: it's harder than it sounds).
But watching this scheduling chaos unfold in my own home, affecting the person I love, knowing that it affects thousands of healthcare workers who are literally saving lives?
I couldn't just watch anymore.
That's when I decided to begin my work on Shepherd. 🐑
Enter Shepherd
Shepherd is my answer to the scheduling chaos. It's not just another scheduling app – it's scheduling software built by someone who hears about the pain points over dinner.
We're about to pilot it with 30+ radiographers at Groote Schuur Hospital. My wife's department is ground zero 🚀.
Will it work? Will they like it? Will The Chief finally get their 40 hours back?
I honestly don't know yet. But I'm going to find out, and I'm going to share every step of the journey here.
If you're a healthcare worker tired of scheduling chaos, a developer curious about what one person with AI tools can build, or just someone who enjoys a good David vs. Goliath story – you're in the right place.
Welcome to the journey.
Adriaan van Wijk - Electronic Engineer turned Shepherd
Next post: How I convinced myself (and my wife) that an aerospace engineer could actually solve hospital scheduling – featuring my new AI coding partner and some truly terrible first prototypes.