The governed observer for the operating room
The seat in the OR that remembers everything.
Every operating room has an observer's seat. It belongs to whoever was allowed in that day. OROpenSeat takes that seat permanently: an agent that watches the case, keeps the true record of what happened and when, and answers for it afterward.
It never touches the patient. It never directs the surgery. It watches, it verifies, it remembers.
Join the founding listThe record is written from memory
The operative record is written after the fact, from memory, under time pressure. Checklists are charted as completed whether or not the room performed them as charted. When a case is reviewed weeks later, the team reconstructs timings it cannot actually know.
Aviation fixed this with a recorder and a set of rules everyone trusts. Surgery has the cameras. It does not yet have the rules, or a record that belongs to the case.
What it does
01
Watch
Watches the whole case. Room video, field video, audio, and device telemetry, resolved into a single timeline.
02
Log
Logs the events that define the case. Phases, milestones, and the verification moments: the checks surgeons already narrate as they work.
03
Verify
Verifies the checklist against the room. Sign-in, time-out, and sign-out as performed, set beside the record as charted.
04
Draft
Drafts the operative note from what happened. Assembled from observed events, in the team's own announced terms, ready for the surgeon's edit and signature.
05
Seal
Seals the record under a charter. Who may open it, for what, and for how long is written down before the first case, and every access is itself recorded.
The charter is the product
Technology is table stakes. What a room will trust is governance, written down in advance.
- 01The record is held for the case team and the patient.
- 02Permitted uses are listed in writing: safety review, debrief, education with consent, the operative note.
- 03Productivity scoring of named individuals is prohibited.
- 04Access is logged. The log is part of the record.
- 05The patient consents to capture, and to each use, separately.
Who it is for first
Teaching programs. You already record cases with consent and narrate them for students. OROpenSeat turns that capture into a structured, searchable, governed record, and gives every teaching case a timeline a trainee can actually learn from.
What it will never do
- Direct or recommend during a live case in its first release.
- Score or rank individual clinicians.
- Sell room data. Ever.
- Open a sealed record outside its charter.
How it started
OROpenSeat began with a heart surgeon teaching in public. Across five short videos of one bypass operation, half of what a master surgeon chose to show students was verification: checking the aorta before trusting it, testing each graft, sweeping for bleeding before closing.
The craft was the checking. We are building the seat that keeps those checks on the record.
FAQ
Does it record patients?+
Only with consent, under tiers the patient controls: the care record, teaching use, and research use are separate decisions.
Who owns the recording?+
The charter governs custody for the case team and the patient. It is not institutional telemetry, and it is not sold.
Does it work with our existing cameras?+
The observer is built to sit on existing room, field, and device feeds where they exist. Fit is confirmed per deployment.
Is it a medical device?+
The first release documents. It does not guide, diagnose, or recommend.
Founding list
For teaching programs and surgical safety teams. Invitations open with the first pilot cohort.
Request an invitation