Tooling & Productivity

Pulse

30 January 2026

Pulse provides a lightweight way for frontline teams to track inventory quickly and accurately, without the cost or complexity of enterprise systems.

✨ Explore our interactive guide to Pulse here

OGP Pulse has truly made our lives as radiographers easier. It’s an efficient and consistent platform that takes the stress out of inventory management and actually brings joy to the process. We now feel confident knowing we won’t have expired items, which gives us real peace of mind.

— SGH Radiographer

The problem

Observed near-expiry wastage in one storeroom alone (e.g. 500+ gloves, 200+ masks, PPE, lotions) due to inventory not being tracked in time

Aside from treating patients, medical teams are also responsible for tracking the items they use. This ensures supplies are replenished in time and expired items are removed before they can be used.

Today, inventory is often tracked using hardcopy forms or excel sheets, with changes updated via emails, whatsapp or shared folders. These processes are manual, error-prone and do not provide live inventory numbers. The burden of tracking items typically falls on one staff, creating a single point of failure.

Due to inefficient inventory tracking processes, medical teams can run out of items unexpectedly, order more than needed, or miss expired items. This delays patient care, creates unnecessary waste, and takes time away from caring for patients.

Radiographers spend up to 40 minutes a week doing inventory checks for one storeroom. With 20 storerooms, this becomes a significant time burden.

— SGH Radiographer

I’m the only person managing inventory, but I need to prioritise clinical work. Sometimes a case drags till 4-5pm, so I submit the inventory reordering form a day late.

— SGH Radiographer

Our approach

🎯 The team had 2 goals for hackathon:

Validate if Pulse - a lightweight inventory tool we built specifically for SCDF medics in 2024, could be expanded and used by other medical teams
Explore enhancements to improve the speed and accuracy of inventory tracking with Pulse

Who we engaged

Sharing with SGH frontline staff leads - how Pulse works and to get a clearer understanding of current inventory workflows of different frontline staff and inventory teams

We spoke to teams from SGH, IMH and NParks to understand their inventory tracking workflows, and assessed that Pulse would be a good fit for their teams.

From there, we ran a 1.5 week pilot with SGH Radiology. This was scoped to one storeroom and involved ~40 radiographers and the logistics team.

What we learned from pilot testing with SGH

SGH Radiographers counting inventory with Pulse

Pulse proved to be a good fit for SGH's workflows and an effective inventory tracking tool. Users rated its overall effectiveness at 4.5/5, with 65% saying it was much better than their previous process. The final inventory check showed 95% accuracy compared with Pulse records.

Additional metrics captured (43 respondents)

Metric	Before Pulse	After Pulse
Time taken to withdraw items	1-5 mins	<1 min (reduced by 50%)
Time taken to complete an inventory check	40+ mins	<10 mins (reduced by 75%)
Time taken to submit inventory orders	30 mins per storeroom	15 mins per storeroom
Confidence in records	Low–moderate (avg ~3/5)	High (avg ~4/5)
Mental effort Scale 1–5 (Effortless → Very intensive)	Moderate–high (3.4/5)	Reduced to low (2.8/5)

Pulse adds a bit of friction to everyday withdrawals, but we feel more accountable for the items we take. It takes effort to change the work culture, but its a good change.

— SGH Radiographer

I won't need to chase staff for the inventory replenishment numbers anymore. I can download it from Pulse anytime I need it.

— SGH Logistics officer

Enhancements made to Pulse

Photos: We introduced up to 3 display photos for items listed in Pulse. This was a popular request to assist staff in identifying items more quickly and accurately.

Reports: We introduced a new report that provides the recommended quantity to replenish items by. Radiographers no longer have to manually calculate reorder quantities, saving them time and reducing errors.

New: Restock overview report

What's next?

Pulse will continue the existing pilot with SGH Radiology, and follow up with other interested agencies.

If you believe your team can benefit from a tool like Pulse, reach out to us at armoury@open.gov.sg to find out more.

A fun team photo at the end of a post-Pilot discussion session with the enthusiastic SGH Radiographers and Inventory Management team at SGH with the Pulse team, using our hands to form the OGP logo

Meet the team

Wenjia (Designer)
Neha (Product Ops)
Gautam (Engineer)
Fang (Engineer)
Syafiq (Product Ops)