Thrawn Launches AI-Powered Scheduling Service to Eliminate Hundreds of Hours of Manual Work for Residency Programs

MIT-founded startup uses mathematical optimization to automate physician scheduling for academic medical centers - now serving 19 departments across 14 hospitals
Cambridge, MA - March 17, 2026 - Thrawn, a healthcare logistics startup, today announced the general availability of its managed physician scheduling service for residency and fellowship programs [https://www.trythrawn.com/]. The service uses a proprietary mathematical optimization engine to generate complete Block, Call, Clinic, and Attending schedules - eliminating the hundreds of hours chief residents and program directors currently spend building schedules manually in spreadsheets.

Thrawn is already live at 19 departments across 14 hospitals, including multiple top-20 academic health systems.

The Problem: Residency Scheduling Is Still Done in Spreadsheets

Physician scheduling remains one of the most time-consuming administrative burdens in graduate medical education. Chief residents [https://www.trythrawn.com/uses/scheduling-for-chief-residents] and program directors [https://www.trythrawn.com/uses/program-directors] spend hundreds of hours each academic year manually constructing rotation schedules, distributing on-call assignments, balancing clinic coverage, and tracking ACGME duty hour compliance - often using Excel, Google Sheets, or decades-old legacy tools.

A single change - one resident's vacation request or an unplanned absence - can cascade across the entire schedule, requiring hours of manual rework. Programs call it the "domino effect," and it's a leading source of administrative stress and resident dissatisfaction.

"Scheduling can be one of the most stressful and time-consuming parts of the role," said Dr. R. Kapoor, a Clinical Fellow in Neurocritical Care at a leading academic medical center and early Thrawn client. "Thrawn made the entire process seamless. I would highly recommend their services to any program looking for a reliable and efficient way to build equitable schedules."

How Thrawn Works: Send Constraints, Receive Finished Schedules

Unlike traditional scheduling software that requires users to learn and operate complex tools, Thrawn operates as a fully managed service [https://www.trythrawn.com/blog/thrawn-launches-residency-scheduling-service]. Programs provide their constraints - resident preferences, rotation requirements, ACGME duty hour rules, vacation requests, and educational goals - and Thrawn delivers optimized, ready-to-review schedules. Chief residents and program directors become schedule reviewers , not schedule builders .

At the core of the service is Thrawn's proprietary Scheduling Programming Language (SPL), a domain-specific optimization engine rooted in mathematical programming and operations research. Unlike rule-based scheduling engines that flag conflicts for humans to resolve, the SPL produces mathematically optimal schedules that satisfy all constraints simultaneously.

Key capabilities include:

* Cross-Schedule Simultaneous Optimization - Block, Call, Clinic, and Attending schedules are generated together as one interconnected system, eliminating the domino effect
* Automated ACGME Duty Hour Compliance - Violations are prevented at generation time, not detected after the fact
* Fairness and Equity Engine - Mathematically balanced distribution of desirable and undesirable assignments across all residents
* Rapid Unplanned Absence Re-optimization - When a resident is unexpectedly unavailable, the engine regenerates coverage suggestions in minutes

"Our clients now review schedules we build, rather than spend hundreds of hours manually creating them," said Marcus Chen, Co-Founder and CEO of Thrawn. "We built the optimization engine we wished existed when we saw firsthand how much time physicians waste on scheduling - time that should be spent on patient care and education."

Founded by MIT Mathematicians, Built on Operations Research

Thrawn was founded in 2024 by Marcus Chen (CEO), Daniel Park (CTO), and Ava Restrepo (COO) - all from MIT. Chen is a published mathematician and DARPA research grant recipient for logistics optimization algorithm development, with training at both MIT and ETH Zurich. Park, an AWS Certified Cloud Solutions Architect, previously built optimization software at Palantir. Restrepo brings operations experience from FedEx and Flexport.

The team's background in mathematical optimization and logistics - not healthcare IT - is what enabled Thrawn to take a fundamentally different approach to scheduling. While incumbent tools are built on rule-based engines, Thrawn's SPL treats scheduling as a constrained optimization problem, producing solutions that are mathematically provable rather than heuristically suggested.

Beyond Scheduling: A Healthcare Logistics Platform

Thrawn's long-term vision extends beyond physician scheduling into broader healthcare operations. The company is actively developing a clinical care coordination platform - automating patient triaging and provider management - with design partners at a top-5 academic health system. Healthcare administration contributes to an estimated $760 billion in annual inefficiency, and Thrawn aims to apply its optimization engine across the full spectrum of healthcare logistics.

"The problem with healthcare is not on the demand side, it is on the supply side," said Chen. "Care coordination is the bridge between patient needs and hospital resources, and the same mathematical optimization that produces better schedules can produce better patient outcomes."

Availability

Thrawn's managed scheduling service is available now for residency and fellowship programs across all specialties. Programs interested in eliminating their scheduling burden can schedule a consultation [https://www.trythrawn.com/].

About Thrawn

Thrawn is building logistics infrastructure to modernize healthcare operations, starting with physician scheduling and care coordination. Founded in 2024 by a team of MIT-trained mathematicians and operations researchers, Thrawn's proprietary Scheduling Programming Language produces mathematically optimal physician schedules for residency and fellowship programs, eliminating hundreds of hours of manual administrative work. The company currently serves 19 departments across 14 hospitals at multiple top-20 academic health systems.

Media Contact
Company Name: Thrawn
Contact Person: Marcus Chen
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Phone: +1 202-555-0103
Country: United States
Website: https://www.trythrawn.com/

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