If Boston is the world’s leader in cutting-edge drug development, the city can now also argue that it’s also ahead of the curve in building delivery systems that get those drugs to patients. ZappRx, a Boston-based startup that has worked to streamline the process by which specialty drug prescriptions are processed, announced on Thursday that it has raised $5.6 million in Series A funding from Atlas Ventures and SR One, the corporate venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline.

For patients with rare disorders, a simple trip to the pharmacy isn’t enough to get the the drugs they need. Refilling specialty medications typically requires a series of signoffs from physicians, insurers, pharmacists, and patients, most of which are still done by fax and voicemail. The costs can also be prohibitive: Many patients spend thousands of dollars a month on their drugs, and some can pay $100,000 a year. In 2014, these specialty medications accounted for 25 percent of all prescribed drugs, yet a typical prescription took between five and six weeks to process. For patients with life-threatening disorders, any delay in getting their meds can be lethal.

ZappRx is a online tool that automates the process by which these specialty prescriptions are filled. It acts as a cross between Amazon 1-Click’s and TurboTax, allowing users to refill their desired medications with a helping hand navigating through the process, said Zoe Barry, the company’s founder and chief executive.

Barry created the company after her brother was diagnosed with epilepsy, and she and her family struggled to negotiate the “Frankenstein-like” processes for ordering his drugs. With ZappRx, she said, patients that would wait over a month for their meds are often able to receive their drugs within a week.

Barry is rapidly expanding her a team in WeWork’s Boston office, having hired 17 people in the last six weeks, bringing ZappRx’s total staff to 25. Half of her employees previously worked at Google, where they helped rewrite the airline reservation system that now underpins sites like Orbitz, Barry said. “It’s a team that’s familiar with displacing old-fashioned technology.”

Jens Eckstein, the managing partner of SR One, said he was eager to contribute to ZappRx’s second round after having participating in the seed round as well. “If you look at the whole spectrum of health care, the manufacturers, providers, and payers are all silos, and there are a too few solutions for getting everyone on the same page,” he said. “All the stakeholders that are involved all feel the pain.”

ZappRx, he said, allows all these silos to “interact in a much better way.”

In total, ZappRx has raised $8.8 million since it launched in 2012.