Clinics that spend hours on prior authorizations for medications often compare Develop Health and SamaCare. Both cut the forms, follow-up, and status checks between a prescription and the patient starting the drug. Develop Health, founded in 2022 in San Francisco, works inside the EHR to check a patient's pharmacy benefit, draft the prior authorization with AI, and track it, and its customers include Ro, LifeMD, and Calibrate. SamaCare, founded in 2018, handles medical-benefit prior authorizations for specialty drugs given in the clinic, for retina, oncology, neurology, and rheumatology practices, and is free to practices because drug makers pay for it.
Telehealth and specialty clinics buried in pharmacy-benefit prior authorizations for drugs such as GLP-1s
Practices whose prior authorizations are mostly medical-benefit drugs given in the clinic
Specialty practices buried in medical-benefit drug prior authorizations
Its price for practices is unclear, because drug makers fund most of the platform
| Axis | Develop Health | SamaCare |
|---|---|---|
| Which drugs it covers | Similar Pharmacy-benefit drugs a patient picks up or has shipped, such as GLP-1s and other specialty medications. |
Similar Medical-benefit drugs given in the clinic, such as infusions and injections in retina, oncology, neurology, and rheumatology. |
| Who uses it today | Similar Telehealth and virtual care prescribers, including Ro, LifeMD, Sunrise, and Calibrate. |
Similar Specialty practices that account for more than $20 billion a year in specialty drug spend. |
| How much is automated | Stronger AI drafts the answers, staff review them, and it submits, follows up, and writes results back to the EHR. |
Staff submit through one workflow and it tracks status across payers, with AI guidance drawn from its prior authorization data. |
| Results it reports | Similar Calibrate cut hands-on time per prior authorization from 10 minutes to 3. |
Similar With drug-maker premium services, a 70 percent cut in time to approval and a 20 percent rise in approval rates. |
| Data behind it | Newer, with a dataset built since 2022. | Stronger Says it holds the largest real-world dataset of medical-benefit prior authorization outcomes, built over nearly a decade. |
| Getting it live | Scores 6.8, because it needs EHR and pharmacy benefit manager connections. | Stronger Scores 7.0, as a lighter rollout inside practice workflows. |
| Knowing what you will pay | Similar Quoted by volume and integration depth, with no public price list. |
Similar Free to practices, paid for by drug makers, so the practice-side terms are harder to pin down. |
Develop Health is for a telehealth company or specialty clinic whose queue is pharmacy-benefit prior authorizations for drugs patients take at home, and that wants AI to draft and chase them inside the EHR. SamaCare is for a retina, oncology, neurology, or rheumatology practice whose queue is medical-benefit drugs given in the office, and that wants a free platform with deep payer data.
Walk away from Develop Health if most of your prior authorizations are for drugs given in your clinic. Walk away from SamaCare if you are uneasy with a platform funded by drug makers, or if your work is mostly pharmacy-benefit prescriptions. Walk away from both if your staff will not change how they work denials and exceptions.