DeGarde is a medical staff scheduling application designed for hospital departments — from 5 to 100+ physicians. It automates the creation of on-call schedules (garde), daily post assignments, and rest day management using mathematical optimization.
The software uses Google's OR-Tools library with the CP-SAT constraint programming solver to generate complete monthly schedules in seconds. It handles two types of rules: hard constraints (mandatory rest after a 24-hour shift, authorized working days per physician, post restrictions) and soft constraints with adjustable weights (weekend equity across Saturday/Sunday/holidays, shift spacing, post continuity, physician preferences).
DeGarde was built specifically for hospital scheduling — not adapted from generic HR or workforce tools. It understands the difference between a Saturday and a Sunday on-call (different compensation), between a 60% part-time physician who doesn't work Wednesdays and a 50% physician available only Mondays and Tuesdays.
Key capabilities:
- Automatic schedule generation with 16 hard constraints and 27+ soft constraints
- Desiderata collection: each physician submits availability preferences (unavailable, prefer not, request on-call, training, leave) via a paint-style calendar
- Weekend equity measured separately for Saturday, Sunday+holidays, and Friday+holiday eves, with 12-month annual smoothing
- Interactive editing with real-time constraint validation
- Half-day tracking (P-system): budget vs actual per month, quarter, and year — aligned with the French legal framework of 207 days / 414 half-days per year for full-time practitioners
- Multi-department support with data isolation (Row Level Security)
- Export to iCal (calendar subscription), CSV, and print
- Mobile-ready progressive web app (PWA)
DeGarde is currently used in a pediatric department at a French public hospital. The team includes 10 physicians with 6 different work rates (30% to 100%), 3 mandatory daytime posts plus 24-hour on-call coverage.
The application is developed actively — 92+ updates shipped since January 2026, driven by direct feedback from the medical team using it daily.
Hosting: European Union (Ireland), PostgreSQL with row-level security. A DPA (Data Processing Agreement) is available on request. No patient health data is stored — only physician names, preferences, and schedules.
