RxLightning
Year founded: 2020
Number of employees: 19 full time employees and six part time/contract employees
Founders: Julia Regan, CEO, and Brad Allen, CTO
Amount of capital raised: $3 million
Notable investors: Health X Ventures
Explain what your company does: RxLightning is a free-to-provider digital platform that streamlines the specialty medication enrollment process for every specialty medication in every therapeutic area, helping to reduce paperwork, eliminate mistakes, streamline communication and accelerate the time to life-altering therapies for patients. Through a single comprehensive, user-friendly platform, RxLightning offers physicians and patient advocates a direct line to specialty pharmacies, bypassing the frustratingly complex brand-specific forms, systems and hubs and reducing time spent on patient enrollment from days (and sometimes weeks) to less than five minutes.
What are some major milestones in the company’s history?
RxLightning was launched in January 2020, just before the global pandemic brought the world to a halt. Despite the very uncertain times, the company raised $1 million in a seed round (which was oversubscribed), has grown to over 17 employees, has executed 8 customer agreements and has begun generating revenue. Several partnerships have been developed, leading to technology actively available to over 30,000 doctors with the demonstrated ability to improve time to therapy from weeks to just a few days –– sometimes even same-day for many patients.
Because of the founders’ due diligence, deep market experience and track record of health tech product development, RxLightning is a solution whose time has not only come, but is long overdue, and it has quickly earned significant interest, investment and adoption, including:
- 2021 Microsoft for Startups: RxLightning is among only a handful of healthcare and life sciences innovators selected for the Microsoft for Startups program, a global program dedicated to accelerating the trajectory of high-potential B2B startups to enable growth at scale with exclusive access to Microsoft technology, mentorship and business support, as well as a streamlined path to selling alongside Microsoft and its global partner ecosystem.
- 2021 Louisville Business Women First, Enterprising Women honoree
- 2021 Louisville Startups to Watch: Louisville Business Journal
- 2021 Endeavor: This worldwide organization that selects, mentors and accelerates high-impact entrepreneurs to catalyze long-term economic growth recognized Julia as one of 23 Female Entrepreneurs in the Midwest Who Need to Be on Your Radar.
- 2020 XLerateHealth (XLH): RxLightning was one of seven startups chosen for the nationally recognized healthcare accelerator’s 10th cohort.
- 2020 Vogt Awards: RxLightning was one of six startups selected. The Vogt Awards are funded by the Vogt Invention and Innovation Fund at the Community Foundation of Louisville. This endowment fund was established in 1999 by Henry Vogt Heuser Sr. to strengthen Louisville’s economic health by supporting innovative startups and inspiring entrepreneurship.
- Illumicare, a leader in point-of-care technology: Through this collaboration, RxLightning’s solution will be available on IllumiCare’s Smart Ribbon ®, a non-intrusive ribbon of information that appears within or momentarily hovers over a hospital’s EMR to display critical data that supports better clinical decision-making, giving healthcare providers a single destination to enroll patients for any specialty medication — brand or generic — at any specialty pharmacy. The app eliminates the need for healthcare providers to go to multiple portals or chase down the appropriate paperwork to complete the enrollment process, leaving them with more time to care for their patients. In addition, one of the primary benefits of the app is its ability to autofill basic information directly into the enrollment form, further simplifying the process.
- Product pilots with Humana Specialty Pharmacy + beta testing with providers such as Houston Methodist and Allergy Partners + specialty pharma manufacturers.
What is your company working on right now?
RxLightning is currently working towards a round of Series A funding, to further fuel the growth of the team and user base. The team is relentless in continuing to develop and refine the product, rolling out product updates on a regular basis to further improve the user experience.
What is on the horizon for 2022?
2022 is going to be a very exciting year for us. As we look ahead to a Series A funding round in the first half of the year and how we’re going to scale with that new infusion of capital, our focus will be on connectivity and growing our provider user base. Our product solves a problem that most potential users don’t realize is a problem –– so we are effectively creating a new category. In the new year, we’ll be kicking off the beginnings of a new marketing campaign that will help us grow brand awareness at a scale that hasn’t been possible before now. In addition, we’re looking at building our sales team and adding to our technology development team to further optimize the product and explore new capabilities that could further benefit users and, ultimately, patients on specialty medications.
Why grow your company from the Kentuckiana region?
I’m originally from Pennsylvania and moved to the area 5 years ago. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the atmosphere in the Kentuckiana area — there is such a strong sense of community and togetherness that I hadn’t experienced before. The healthcare ecosystem is robust and the people are always willing to network and support each other. Being the CEO of a start-up, personal relationships are critical, and those that I’ve developed locally have proven invaluable. That together with the Derby, bourbon distilleries aplenty and small hometown feel of downtown New Albany, what’s not to love! Although my company has been 100% remote since our inception in early 2020, we’ve decided to officially make this area our physical headquarters and have begun the search for a local office space. I’m confident the opportunity will present itself soon and we'll be ready to give back the support everyone has graciously given us.
