App Uses Pill Bottles to Look Up Medicare Drug Prices

CheckRx, a startup in San Diego, is offering a mobile phone app that can simplify the Medicare Part D drug plan shopping process.

A Medicare plan shopper, or insurance agent, can use the app to scan the shopper's prescription bottle labels, use the results to create a list of drugs the shopper is taking, and show how much an enrollee in the available Medicare drug plans would pay for the drugs.

Other apps, such as Affinda and Drug Barcode Scanner Pro, can also identify prescription drugs by scanning the bottle labels. What sets the CheckRx app apart is the built-in connection with the Medicare drug plan pricing database.

Augustus Holm, the firm's 18-year-old founder, graduated from high school last spring. He is the son of Patricia Salas and Thomas Holm, the CEOs of SBHIS Insurance Services, a Medicare plan agency based in Chula Vista, California. Holm's grandmother was also a Medicare agent.

Holm says he began developing the app when he was 14, after he started helping his grandmother look up Medicare drug prices in a 500-page pricing guide.

Holm is now developing a new app that will help users shop for Medicare Advantage plans as well as Medicare drug plans. The new app will provide alerts when policy terms change, Holm says.