SamaCare Named 2026 Prix Galien USA Finalist for Best Digital Health Solution

Recognition honors SamaCare's AI-powered Medical Benefit Prior Authorization Intelligence Platform for helping patients access specialty therapies faster

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- SamaCare, the AI-powered medical benefit prior authorization intelligence platform, today announced it has been named a 2026 Prix Galien USA finalist in the Best Digital Health Solution category for its AI-powered Medical Benefit Prior Authorization Intelligence Platform.

Widely regarded as one of the most prestigious honors in life sciences innovation, the Prix Galien recognizes breakthroughs with the potential to improve human health. SamaCare was selected among 23 Best Digital Health Solution nominees in a year marking the 20th anniversary of the Prix Galien USA Awards.

For patients prescribed specialty therapies for cancer, autoimmune disease, neurologic disease, retinal disease, and other serious or progressive conditions, the next step after diagnosis should be treatment. Instead, many face a complex administrative journey before therapy can begin, including benefits verification, prior authorization, payer review, step therapy, appeals, follow-up, scheduling, and rescheduling. These delays can mean disease progression, relapse, anxiety, treatment non-starts, and worsening outcomes.

SamaCare was founded to address that gap between prescription and treatment start. The company's platform transforms fragmented medical benefit prior authorization into intelligent healthcare infrastructure, helping providers navigate payer requirements, reduce administrative burden, and move patients to therapy faster.

"Every breakthrough therapy solves one scientific challenge: how to treat disease," said Syam Palakurthy, Founder and CEO of SamaCare. "But there is another challenge that determines whether innovation reaches patients: whether people can actually access the therapies their physicians prescribe. Being named a Prix Galien USA finalist is deeply meaningful because this award recognizes health impact. Our team is focused on making sure patients do not get stuck in administrative limbo after their doctor has already decided what treatment they need."

Medical benefit prior authorization remains one of healthcare's most fragmented access challenges. Unlike retail pharmacy workflows, medical benefit therapies are often administered in specialty practices, infusion centers, or physician offices, with payer requirements that vary by plan, therapy, site of care, diagnosis, documentation, and route of administration. For patients with serious or progressive disease, delays can carry clinical consequences. For providers, the process consumes staff time that could otherwise support patient care.

SamaCare's platform unifies prior authorization creation, submission, tracking, and management across payers and plans. By combining workflow automation, payer policy intelligence, AI-driven guidance, and real-world provider data, SamaCare helps specialty practices anticipate requirements, avoid preventable delays and denials, and maintain visibility into authorizations in flight.

The platform also converts millions of prior authorization interactions into real-world patient access intelligence. This gives life sciences market access, patient services, and provider engagement teams a clearer view into the administrative barriers patients and providers encounter after a therapy is prescribed. These insights can help identify access friction earlier, inform targeted provider support, and improve the script-to-therapy journey.

"SamaCare's innovation is not AI for AI's sake," Palakurthy added. "It is AI applied to one of the least visible but most consequential parts of healthcare: the operational path between a prescription and a patient actually receiving treatment. Our goal is to make that path faster, clearer, and less painful for the providers and patients navigating it every day."

SamaCare supports provider-administered specialty medications across oncology, ophthalmology/retina, neurology, rheumatology, immunology, gastroenterology, rare disease, ambulatory infusion, and other specialty care settings. Its intelligent system for medical benefit prior authorization has helped reduce delays, denials, and therapy abandonment while creating a new source of real-world access intelligence for the healthcare ecosystem.

About SamaCare

SamaCare is an AI-powered insights and interventions platform designed to accelerate patient access to specialty therapies by unifying and optimizing the prior authorization process for provider-administered medications. The platform aggregates and analyzes real-world data from millions of prior authorizations across a nationwide network of providers, delivering actionable insights and in-workflow support that reduce delays, denials, and therapy abandonment.

SamaCare partners with pharmaceutical manufacturers, providers, and patient access teams to improve the script-to-therapy journey and help patients start and stay on treatment. For more information, visit www.samacare.com.

About The Galien Foundation

The Galien Foundation fosters, recognizes, and rewards excellence in scientific innovation to improve human health. Established in Paris in 1970 in honor of Galen, the father of medical science and modern pharmacology, the Prix Galien is widely regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in biopharmaceutical research. Today, the Prix Galien operates through 16 chapters spanning more than 75 countries across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. For more information, visit www.galienfoundation.org.

SOURCE SamaCare