NEW ALBANY, Ind. -- RxLightning, creator of the industry’s first comprehensive platform for streamlining specialty medication access and affordability, today announced that it closed a $17.5 million Series A investment to support the company’s growth and further remove barriers to life-saving therapies. The round was led by LRVHealth, with participation from McKesson Ventures and existing investors Novartis (dRx Capital), Onco360 (BrightSpring Health Services), Hearst Ventures, and HealthX Ventures. This investment brings RxLightning’s total capital raised since inception to $20.5 million.
With RxLightning, healthcare providers – from those practicing at independent clinics to large health systems – leverage a streamlined workflow to complete the multi-step specialty medication onboarding process in a matter of minutes. The company’s MedAccess Ecosystem is an integrated platform that provides transparency into the patient access and affordability journey for doctors, patients, specialty pharmacies, and drug manufacturers, reducing administrative burden and enabling onboarding support in real time.
“Many people have tried to fix the slow, manual specialty medication onboarding process, but they’ve approached it with a single drug, pharmacy, or isolated part of the process in mind. RxLightning is the first to provide an end-to-end solution that covers the entire market – from every medication and destination to every stakeholder in the process,” said Julia Regan, CEO and founder at RxLightning. “This new investment will help us further scale our medication access capabilities, support infrastructure and personnel growth, and maintain the unprecedented rate at which we’ve grown our partner base – all while receiving strategic guidance from leading industry experts.”
The specialty medication market represents more than half of total drug spending in the U.S., reaching $301 billion in 2021, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Despite this growing reliance on advanced therapies, accessing these medications remains a slow, manual, and costly process. Every specialty medication currently requires a custom paper form that a provider or patient must complete. These forms are then pushed through a manual process outside the electronic health record (EHR), which can result in significant care delays.
RxLightning is the single destination to enroll patients for any specialty medication – brand or generic – at any specialty pharmacy. The company has digitized forms for over 1,200 specialty drugs with custom logic and smart-pick menus, and continuously adds forms for new medications as they enter the market. In addition, the modular platform automates the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) program, confirms patient eligibility and coverage, and streamlines enrollment in financial assistance programs to further eliminate access barriers. With RxLightning, providers and patients can complete the entire onboarding process in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks.
“RxLightning has gone far beyond creating a digital experience that replaces paper forms, and has created a first-of-its-kind ecosystem that connects every part of the specialty medication process,” said Josh Flum, managing partner at LRVHealth. “As the specialty market continues to grow and transform the treatment of diseases, RxLightning will play an important role in improving access while minimizing cost and burden on the system. We’re proud to be standing alongside such a talented team on this journey.”
“RxLightning addresses the tedious administrative burden faced by providers when trying to initiate patients on specialty medications,” said Carrie Williams, partner for McKesson Ventures. “The complexity will only increase as new drugs entering the market require even more nuanced clinical, financial, and logistical considerations to ensure patients get access to medications as efficiently as possible. It’s rare to find a company that is so truly aligned across pharma, payer, provider, and patient needs.”
With this funding round, LRVHealth’s Josh Flum and McKesson Ventures’ Carrie Williams will join RxLightning’s board of directors alongside HealthX Ventures’ Mark Bakken, former Walgreens executive Brad Fluegel, and Julia Regan.
RxLightning is available at no cost to healthcare providers to help them get patients started on specialty medications at lightning speed. To register, visit rxlightning.com.
About LRVHealth
LRVHealth is the "Inside Healthcare" venture capital platform. Through a network of strategic limited partners that includes leading providers, payers, and vendors and touches half of all healthcare consumers in the U.S., LRVHealth applies industry knowledge and operational experience to early-stage companies focused on innovation. LRVHealth’s exclusive focus is helping to transform healthcare by forging partnerships among its network members and the entrepreneurs addressing the industry’s biggest challenges and opportunities. For more information please follow LRVHealth on Twitter (@LRVHealth) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/lrvhealth), or visit www.LRVHealth.com.
About McKesson Ventures
McKesson Ventures is a strategic venture firm backed by McKesson Corporation focusing on early and growth stage digital health and tech-enabled healthcare services companies. McKesson Ventures targets companies that both catalyze and benefit from the key changes taking place in the U.S. healthcare landscape. McKesson Corporation is a diversified healthcare services leader dedicated to advancing health outcomes for patients everywhere. Visit www.mckessonventures.com to learn more.
About RxLightning
RxLightning digitizes, automates, and streamlines the historically manual specialty medication onboarding process. With RxLightning, providers can quickly and easily complete patient enrollment for every specialty medication in every therapeutic area, helping reduce paperwork, streamline communication, and accelerate speed-to-therapy. Through the company’s MedAccess Ecosystem, patients, providers, specialty pharmacies, and pharmaceutical manufacturers have insights into each step of the patient onboarding journey. Visit our newsroom and learn more at www.rxlightning.com.