The new healthcare monitoring platform for Medicare beneficiaries and caregivers

He didn’t know it then, but those words were a precursor to his journey as a caregiver — and as founder of a new venture.

This week, Cangialosi’s Baltimore-area SaaS company, Twilight Technologies, quietly flipped the switch on its free solution for the aging population in the US and its caregivers. 

Called the Illuminator, it works to ease the healthcare process for Medicare beneficiaries and the people who care for them by helping manage and monitor medical information, Cangialosi, a longtime Baltimore startup ecosystem mainstay, told Technical.ly

“It’s doppler radar for the aging population,” said Cangialosi, a cofounder of incubator hub Betamore, where he currently serves as chair. He’s also a managing member of the Baltimore Angels and a partner at Early Light Ventures.

The solution was inspired by Cangialosi’s firsthand experience with what he called “cloudy storms” when it comes to an aging parent.

In 2022, his mother was diagnosed with a chronic cognitive disease. After 30 years of her being fine living as a divorcee 3 hours away, she needed more help. During what he called a year of “crisis,” he and his wife Teresa moved her to Baltimore.

“From that point, [I] took care of all the affairs in New Jersey, sold her house and just did all the power of attorney stuff,” said Cangialosi. “Caregiver burnout is a major thing, major, major issue.” 

About 80% of the people he talked to didn’t even know the name of their parents’ primary care provider, he discovered. So on the back end of building digital health startups with Olive Ventures, he began market research for Twilight Technologies. He spoke with just under 100 caregivers by January 2023. In February 2023, he started to look for solutions already on the market.

“I saw some great ones, a lot of them around the coordination of care, things that brought in benefits, a lot of really good, strong caregiver platforms like ianacare and CircleOf,” Cangialosi said. 

But he still felt there was a place for something more, and in March 2023 started prototyping with Twilight Technologies’ CTO Justin Schaper, who has over 25 years experience working in healthcare data. 

The duo used text files from Cangialosi’s mother’s Medicare records (with her permission) to extract information like healthcare diagnosis codes. From this they created a data model, and started offering the service for other people — until, he said, Medicare ended availability of its public use files last summer. That prompted the next step: direct API integration.

“We use what’s called the Blue Button API,” Cangialosi said. With consent, that allows the company to pull claims data for anyone who’s on Medicare Part A, Part B or Part D.

The Illuminator uses the info to produce a CareGraph, which integrates Medicare details with doctors visits, hospitalizations and medications. Here’s how it all looks on the backend.

The seven-person team at Twilight Technologies plans to prioritize the development of new features for the platform, aiming for a series of weekly “logical pushes,” per Cangialosi, who said Twilight is currently piloting integration with payers and at-home care agencies.

“If I can just lower somebody’s stress level just a little bit,” Cangialosi, “I’ve won in this whole equation.”