The need for Medicare is decades away, but a 17-year-old student from La Jolla has developed an app designed to make the process of navigating Medicare easier.
CheckRx, created by La Jolla resident and Bishop’s School student Augustus Holm, will launch soon to speed up the review process and help Medicare agents find the best plan for their customers. is.
The app allows a Medicare representative to scan a customer’s Medicare-covered prescriptions or set of prescriptions and see which plan covers the most prescriptions and at the lowest price, Augustus said. The company explained that it is a “plan comparison tool” that can inform users of the We also introduce recommended plans. From there, agents can save the listing and provide it to clients. Augustus said he would eventually like to make the app available directly to consumers.
“Our new app takes this process from 30 minutes to just under three minutes. [minutes]” said Augustus. “We designed his CheckRx to be fast, accurate, and compliant. [with applicable privacy laws]”
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Augustus, who grew up in a family of Medicare agents, was familiar with the process, but it was still time-consuming.
“In fact, my first job was to help my grandmother find prescriptions in a huge binder full of prescriptions. [a list of prescriptions covered by various Medicare plans] “I was 12 years old,” he said. “The binder contained hundreds of pages, but it was basic enough that I could help. So she gave me $5 for each application I filled out. The whole process will take many hours, depending on the number of leads.”
Although he enjoyed spending time with his grandmother, trying to make plans quickly cut into the time he needed to spend on school and sports. He also likes surfing, racing dirt bikes, and playing guitar.
But the seed was planted to find a way to make the process faster and more streamlined.
“I missed her and she had to do all the work, so I wanted something to speed up the process so we could spend more time together and still get the work done. I wanted to make one,” Augustus said. “I spent months thinking about how to develop something, trying ways to automate the process. Then I actually moved into the development side and worked on how to put that information into practice. started.”
He started learning app development and put together a proof of concept to pitch to investors. Ultimately, he obtained his $350,000 funding to build a prototype.
The app is now ready to be deployed and works exactly as I had envisioned, except for the list save feature, which didn’t occur to me, but the agent is using it. “I said that’s what’s needed,” he said.
CheckRx will be available for download on various platforms by early November.
CheckRx has amassed a waiting list of more than 4,000 people since August. The number of users is expected to surge to nearly 10,000 by the end of the year.
Augustus recommends that aspiring app developers start with the user interface and experience and build technology around it.
“Expect everything to go wrong,” he said. “There wasn’t a single week where everything went the way I wanted it to. But the software is so great now that it worked out for the best.”
Looking to follow in his family’s footsteps, Augustus is studying to become a Medicare worker when he grows up. “I plan to get my license as soon as I turn 18,” he said. “I’m ready for the test, but I can’t take it until then.”
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