By skyforbes 
Jo Schneier has just launched his newest venture, an AI-driven platform to simplify the process of signing up for Medicare and Medicaid benefits.
Serial entrepreneur Jo Schneier is at it again. Having successfully launched Cognotion in 2013 as a way to help train young adults to enter the elder care workforce, Jo has now turned his sights on an even larger target: demystifying Medicare.
It’s called Trusty.care, and it’s an AI-driven software platform that guides people over 65 through the byzantine process of signing up for complicated government insurance forms. Think TurboTax for Medicare.
Schneier, who co-founded Cognotion with Jonathan Dariyanani, is leaving the company on good footing, and in good hands.
“We have the model set up well now,” said Schneier. “We figured out the main pieces of the puzzle in order to make it go and grow.” Jo and the team brought in another round of funding, and then hired an experienced CEO, Tim Murray, the former head of K12 Inc.
But as passionate as he was about Cognotion, the idea for Trusty.care was one that Schneier just couldn’t ignore.
When it comes to the question of how to innovate within an incredibly complicated government program like Medicare, Schneier gets animated. In fact, it’s the size of the challenge that motivates him.
“Over the course of the last two years when I would speak at different conferences I kept having people come up to me, talking to me about what was happening in their home environment, as it related to aging,” says Schneier. “It was an intense, emotional conversation that happened again and again. As an entrepreneur, those things start to catch my eye. So I spent about a year doing some pretty in-depth research into the aging space as it connected to the home environment.”
“What we landed on was a little bit unexpected but makes total sense. When somebody hits 65, the first thing they need to do is to sign up for Medicare. This is incredibly arcane and complex, and the financial implications of getting it wrong are enormous. If you don’t sign up for a couple of these different pieces within four months of turning 65, you start to have these penalties. There’s Medicare, Medigap, Medicare Advantage, there’s part A, C. It’s Kafkaesque.”
Trusty.care is simple on its face. People can log into the program and over a short period of time get their forms ready and submitted to the government. They can trust — hence the name — that they’ve filled everything out correctly, and that there won’t be any surprises down the road.
The product itself will take a three-tiered approach, with an initial free service followed by a fee for individual applications. The final tier will be a concierge level, with Care Advocates who walk the user through the process on the phone, step by step.
The Trusty.care business model also taps into Schneier’s passion for workforce development, which was one of Cognotion’s key differentiators.
“There’s this massive untapped talent that is sitting and working in Starbucks, with very little future. What if we could be the first employer for these young adults? I feel like the best way to lift all the boats in our economy is to get people meaningful work.”
When it comes to the question of how to innovate within an incredibly complicated government program like Medicare, Schneier gets animated. In fact, it’s the size of the challenge that motivates him.
“I think one of the reasons why nobody has done this yet is because of how byzantine it is and it feels just like an insurmountable task. But I like that. I do like a challenge.”
After their recent test launch, Trusty.care received 600 purchases within a three week period, and 15,000 expressions of interest in purchasing the program. Schneier is optimistic that the next version to hit the market as a live product will be even better, and will prove out their concept quickly.
To learn more about Trusty.care, go to trusty.care.