The Right Tool for Your Program

Lightning Bolt, QGenda, and Amion are built for large health systems. Orbit is built for residency programs and clinics. Here's what that means for you.

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Lightning Bolt has earned its reputation with large academic medical centers — multi-department, hundreds of physicians, deep EHR integrations. If that's your world, it's a strong choice.

But if you're a program director, clinic manager, or department chair running a residency program or mid-size practice, the enterprise tool may be more than you need — and less than you want.

The Detailed Comparison

Lightning Bolt
Orbit

Setup & Onboarding

Months-long implementation with dedicated project manager. IT coordination required. Custom integrations.

Setup & Onboarding

Afternoon setup. Join code gets your team on board in minutes. No IT required. No spreadsheet migration headache.

Who Uses It Daily

Dedicated scheduling coordinators. Physicians view a published schedule they receive via email or portal.

Who Uses It Daily

Program directors, attendings, residents, and staff. Everyone sees My Orbit with their personal daily cards and can contribute via Comms.

Staff Experience

Providers receive their schedule. Portal view is read-only. Limited engagement tools.

Staff Experience

My Orbit shows daily cards with site prep, fairness explanations, peer props, shift swap marketplace, and team chat. Residents see confidence in their schedule.

ACGME Compliance

Available as part of enterprise package. Requires separate configuration and learning curve.

ACGME Compliance

Built-in 4-week rolling averages, real session times, duty hour attestation, training exposure tracking, and exportable site-visit reports.

AI & Automation

Constraint solver for optimization. Requires expert operation. Limited explanations to staff.

AI & Automation

HAL — conversational AI for both schedulers and staff. Generates schedules, explains fairness, finds coverage, checks launch readiness, answers questions in plain English.

Pricing

Enterprise contracts. Typically 5–6 figures annually. Multi-year commitment.

Pricing

Free to start. Scales with your program. No surprise bills. $0 to thousands based on your needs.

Real-Time Collaboration

Coordinator publishes schedule. Changes require re-publish cycle. Limited live updates.

Real-Time Collaboration

Live sync via Firebase. Every schedule change is instantly visible to the whole team across all devices.

Orbit vs QGenda

QGenda is an enterprise workforce management platform built for large health systems managing hundreds of staff across multiple specialties. It's powerful — and priced accordingly.

QGenda
  • Enterprise pricing (typically $500–$1,000+/provider/year)
  • Multi-month implementation with dedicated team
  • Built for hospital-wide workforce management across departments
  • Strong for OR scheduling and complex rotation pools
  • Staff experience is coordinator-centric — providers receive their schedule
  • AI features focused on demand forecasting and coverage optimization
  • Requires IT involvement for setup, EHR integrations, and ongoing configuration
Orbit
  • Free to start — scales with your program, no per-user sticker shock
  • Afternoon setup with join codes — no IT, no implementation project
  • Built for residency programs, clinics, and mid-size practices
  • ACGME compliance built-in from day one — not an add-on module
  • Staff-first: My Orbit, HAL fairness explanations, shift huddles, peer props
  • HAL — conversational AI for schedulers and staff in plain English
  • Designed by a practicing program director who uses it every week
Bottom line: QGenda excels at enterprise-scale workforce management across hospital departments. If you're a department chair or program director running a residency clinic — not a hospital system — Orbit solves your actual problem at a fraction of the price, with ACGME compliance built in.

Orbit vs Amion

Amion (now part of Doximity) is the legacy physician scheduling tool many programs have used for years. It works for simple schedule distribution — but it was built in a different era.

Amion
Orbit

Scheduling Experience

Spreadsheet-style schedule entry. Optimized for pushing a calendar out to staff. Staff view via Amion.com or iCal sync.

Scheduling Experience

Real-time collaborative board and grid views with drag-and-drop, Assembly Board, live sync. HAL auto-fills gaps and validates before publish.

ACGME Compliance

Not a core feature. Duty hours require separate tracking in MedHub, New Innovations, or spreadsheets alongside Amion.

ACGME Compliance

Built-in: 4-week rolling averages, duty hour attestation residents fill in 30 seconds, training exposure heat maps, and one-click ACGME site visit PDF.

Staff Experience

Providers receive a published schedule. iCal export. Limited two-way interaction beyond viewing.

Staff Experience

My Orbit daily cards, shift huddle chat, peer props, swap marketplace, site prep, real-time check-in, and "Ask HAL why" fairness explanations.

AI & Automation

Manual scheduling with rule-based constraint checks. No conversational AI. No gap-filling assistant.

AI & Automation

HAL generates full weeks, fills gaps respecting credentials and pairing rules, detects burnout risk, explains decisions in plain English — for both schedulers and staff.

Ownership & Direction

Part of Doximity. Enterprise SaaS roadmap driven by health system contracts and Doximity platform priorities.

Ownership & Direction

Built by a practicing program director. Every feature request comes from real operational pain. The roadmap is driven by the people who schedule residents every week.

Bottom line: Amion handles basic schedule distribution. Orbit handles the full picture: building the schedule, validating compliance, keeping staff engaged, and documenting everything for your ACGME site visit — in one place.

Built by a Program Director

Orbit wasn't built by a software company studying healthcare from the outside. It was built by a practicing program director and department chair who schedules residents every week.

Every feature reflects real operational pain — from ACGME compliance exports that actually work, to the "Ask HAL why" button that explains a resident's schedule in plain English, to the duty hour attestation system that residents actually use because it takes 30 seconds instead of 10 minutes.

That domain expertise is embedded in every line of code. You're not buying a generic platform adapted for healthcare. You're buying the tool that solves your exact problem.

What Orbit Does That Enterprise Tools Don't

📋

ACGME Compliance Suite

4-week rolling averages, duty hour attestation, training exposure heat maps, and GME-ready PDF exports for your next site visit.

🤖

HAL Intelligence

Conversational AI that talks to both schedulers and staff. Finds coverage, explains fairness, detects burnout risk, validates before publish.

👥

Staff-First Experience

My Orbit daily cards, peer props, micro-feedback, shift swap marketplace, contextual site prep, and on-call visibility for every provider.

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