Develop Health is a San Francisco-based company building a generative-AI-native platform for medication access, tackling the administrative complexity that delays patients from getting the prescriptions they need. The company was founded by Mel van Londen and Benjamin Easton, who previously held roles at provider-facing healthcare startups Canvas Medical and Rupa Health. There they saw firsthand how poor communication and data fidelity between providers and payers led to delayed treatment, lost revenue, and worse patient outcomes, which became the motivation for Develop Health.
The platform is architected around more than a dozen purpose-built large language model pipelines, which the company describes as the first medication access platform fully built on generative AI rather than retrofitting AI onto legacy automation. It plugs into virtual care and EHR workflows to verify insurance coverage in real time, generate and submit the correct prior authorization package for a given medication and payer, follow up on and track status continuously, and return structured data back into the provider's system, all without manual effort from care teams.
Develop Health initially focused on the pharmacy benefit space, helping digital health companies navigate coverage and prior authorization for prescription drugs. Its roadmap expands beyond that core into the medical benefit market, where authorization is even more complex, and into traditional providers outside of digital health. The company is also deepening integrations with both EHRs and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), extending its reach across the medication access supply chain.
The company raised a $14.3 million Series A in 2025 led by Wing Venture Capital, with participation from Afore Capital, South Park Commons, and J Ventures, bringing total funding to roughly $17.6 million. The round funds the expansion into the medical benefit market and deeper EHR and PBM integrations.
For digital health companies and providers prescribing high-cost or specialty medications, Develop Health offers a way to compress the days or weeks typically lost to coverage checks and authorization paperwork, with the usual caveat that payer-side variability and evolving regulation shape how fully such workflows can be automated.