Tech community steps up to help Indiana respond to COVID-19

This story and the list below will be updated with new and ongoing resources from the tech community to assist with the COVID-19 pandemic. Bookmark this page for work-from-home tools, virtual meetings software, cybersecurity safety and much more, and help us add other examples to it.

It’s been nearly 100 years since the U.S. has grappled with a pandemic like COVID-19, so few of us have personal knowledge of what we should do in such a situation. It’s unsettling for most of us, and scary to many.

It’s times like this where Mr. Rogers’s advice springs to mind: “Look to the helpers.”

Many of today’s helpers, like Roche, Eli Lilly, local hospitals and clinics are on the front lines of research and healthcare. Others are in the TechPoint community — leaders in distance learning, virtual gatherings and cyber security to name a few.

Leaning on them, our own knowledge well and experts in healthcare and other areas, we will be sharing insights, tips and ways to use technology to keep in touch with each other and to embrace our new normal as best we all can. Because you’ve likely already searched and found many resource pages, we don’t want to add to the mountain of information. Instead, we’ll try to highlight the best of the best actions from our tech community in this singular, regularly updated story.

That includes the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership resource page, business experts like the Indy Chamber and the Small Business Administration.

We’ll also provide some ways to help you work efficiently (if not always happily) from home. We’d love to hear what’s working for you. Please let us know if there are others in our community who are adjusting their work flows to contribute to the greater good, those who are doing an outstanding job of ensuring these WFH days aren’t damaging company culture, and those who are doing great things in difficult times.

We’ve worked long and hard together to advance Indiana’s tech ecosystem. Those habits of collaboration, contribution and helping the next entrepreneur will serve us well in the weeks and months ahead. We’ll get through this together.

Please join us in thanking these Indiana tech companies who have stepped up to help!

Activate Fitness is a new app launched by a New Palestine entrepreneur that gives parents a free way let kids earn fun screen time by being physically active.

AT&T launched a $10M Distance Learning & Family Connections Fund to help to expand and connect online learning resources for parents, teachers and students.

Baker Hill has launched NextGen® SBA Fast Track, an expansion of Baker Hill’s small business and commercial lending capabilities designed to fast track small business applications looking to access CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds.

Bell Techlogix wants to hire laid-off service industry workers while they are out of work, to put their excellent people skills to use, and customer support.

Boardable is offerinng a 90-day free trial for nonprofits to use for virtual meetings and other communication needs. Also, Boardable CEO Jeb Banner created a spreadsheet to encourage tipping of people in the Indianapolis area food service to keep them afloat as restaurants and bars were closed.  

Boardable, Covideo, Innovate Map and others banded together to provide relieve to Broad Ripple businesses.

A Butler University professor gave advice on remaining productive in your WFH world.

Diagnotes is Helping Health Systems Address the Coronavirus Crisis as several health systems in Indiana are using its sophisticated healthcare collaboration and telehealth features to facilitate the screening and treatment of patients and reduce the risk of spreading the virus or exposing high-risk groups.

Eleven Fifty is offering free HTML and CSS courses for beginners.

Eli Lilly is on the forefront of helping test health care workers.

Emplify launched a tool to help with employee morale.

FirstPerson and Emplify are among companies helping their workers (many for the first time)deal with the “strain of isolation” from working from home.

FirstPerson has assembled a resource hub to assist its clients and the general public with addressing the changing dynamics of human resources issues and other challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

FuseMe has developed a comprehensive guide for recruiters and talent teams on how to: Transition to “Recruiting from Home”; Attract Talent during the Coronavirus; and Navigate a Hiring Delay

gener8tor and IEDC teamed to provide help to Indiana small businesses.

*NEW — Greenlight Guru is a medical device quality management system and regulatory consulting company located in Union 525. Greenlight Guru has offered pro bono access to their platform, as well as pro bono consulting, to several organizations (including MIT) to help get more ventilators and CPAP machines on the market as quickly and safely as possible.

The Halo App—a private, peer lending community that connects people for $100-$1,000 loans—announced a rapid response of $1 million in loans to those financially affected by COVID-19. The zero-fee loans are helping people who need money immediately for food, bills and essentials during this global crisis. There are no application fees or credit requirements. Since October 2019, the peer lending app has helped 260 people access more than $50,000 in loans.

*NEW — hc1, working with a coalition of lab partners, launched the CV19 Lab Testing Dashboard powered by hc1. An interactive dashboard showing COVID-19 testing rates, de-identified test results (detected, not detected, or inconclusive), and key demographic filters for those tested (age, gender). The CV19 Lab Testing Dashboard is available as a public health service to individuals directly involved with policies and programs to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and healthcare providers who are delivering care to help those who are impacted. Qualified individuals need only request access at cv19dashboard.org.

*NEW — The State of Indiana has launched a PPE Marketplace through “Back on Track Indiana” to connect small businesses and nonprofit organizations with PPE so they can safely reopen. This online hub serves as a resource for Indiana small businesses employing up to 150 associates that are in need of personal protective equipment (PPE) to ensure the health and safety of their workforce during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 

Indiana University is providing “lot hot spots,” at all of it’s campuses, which is free, 24-hour, high-speed Wi-Fi access available to the general public who may not have internet connectivity due to COVID-19-related closures. Users can maintain social distancing while accessing the internet from their cars.

Innovatemap is offering live-on-Zoom workshops about design systems led by Jon Moore, principal product designer. Take this time to learn about design systems and watch Jon break them down to help you have better conversations and make better decisions for your new and existing projects.

Kaplan and Purdue Global are working together to help furloughed or laid-off employees during this challenging time by offering free or subsidized online courses for a limited time. Gain skills and knowledge from virtually anywhere as you prepare to return to the workplace. Purdue Global offers master’s, bachelor’s, and associate’s degrees, as well as certificates and micro-credentials. Choose from online programs in business, communications, information technology, health sciences, psychology, and more.

Moser Consulting has released the Dos and Don’ts of protecting the home networking edge along with an infographic to help protect yourself and your organization with 5 tips for maintaining good cybersecurity.

Olio helps connect hospitalists and nursing homes to increase the speed by which nursing home patients receive care. On average, nursing home patients are receiving updated care in three minutes, not three hours. Olio is in use in two of the largest hospital networks in Indiana, as well as for free in hundreds of nursing homes.

As states ponder when to re-open, OurHeath and its new partner Marathon Health are offering businesses a “Return to Work” framework to answer complex operational questions, including: where employees should go if they experience COVID symptoms, how and when to implement consistent policies across different geographic locations, and how and when to bring employees back to the workplace.

Passageways has launched a new COVID-19 Resource Center that nonprofits and state, local and city government bodies will want to check out. In addition to offering free use of their OnBoard Meeting Platform with new Zoom integration through August 31, Passageways has assembled some great resources on remote leadership and other issues facing board governance and management.

Pierce Aerospace is preparing to help hospital systems relieve resource constraints by enabling medical delivery via drones, such as getting blood or test kits to rural America. They are fielding inquiries from local, national, and even international hospitals and governments seeking to scale a drone delivery response quickly and in compliance with pending regulations. For more information, contact CEO Aaron Pierce at info@pierceaerospace.net.

The Polis Center at IUPUI, using the SAVI Community Information System, created a COVID-19 Data Hub. It includes maps, dashboards, and data to help practitioners and policy makers identify vulnerable at-risk populations, areas most impacted, and community resources. Content includes:

• Tracking National COVID-19 Cases – A dashboard tracking U.S. Coronavirus cases at the county level updated on a daily basis. Click each county to see trends over time.
• Tracking Indiana COVID-19 Cases – Live dashboard of Indiana’s confirmed COVID-19 cases, testing levels, and deaths, along with a county map showing the location of cases.
• Risk of Social Isolation in Older Adults – This statewide StoryMap uses four indicators for adults over 65—poverty, marriage status, living alone, and disability—to indicate areas where more seniors may be at risk of social isolation.
• Neighborhood-Level Risk Estimates- Models of which Marion County neighborhoods are at higher risk of severe and deadly cases, based on demographic data and health estimates.
• Map of emergency food sources in Marion County – Map the location of open food pantries and soup kitchens as well as locations where meals and lunch boxes are being provided during the COVID-19 pandemic.  View these data along with food deserts and COVID-19 risk maps.

Queue Saver is new, efficient—and free until July—way for retailers to queue up customers to safely get into stores just launched from Indy-based Andromeda. Customers register their place in line with their smartphones (via a QR code or unique weblink) and are notified when it’s their turn. They can safely wait in their car or other location to keep person-to-person contact as minimal as possible.

*NEW — To help shoulder the cost of unprecedented demand on food backs during the pandemic, Raytheon Technologies is funding the equivalent of 50 million meals to Feeding America®, a domestic hunger-relief organization that supports food banks and food-security initiatives across the United States.

Rose Hulman extended its homework hotline, which delivers free math & science homework help at AskRose.org. The site also offers more than 500 resources available through videos and downloadable reference materials.

Rose Hulman is also planning its first virtual career fair on April 29, the same day that an on-campus event was originally planned. Two weeks ahead of the event, 75 companies have already registered to participate (with more to come)!

Salesforce is offering free access for qualified emergency response teams, call centers and care management teams for health systems affected by coronavirus through Health Cloud. Through Tableau, Salesforce is offering a free data resource hub to help organizations see and understand coronavirus data in near real-time, using case data compiled by Johns Hopkins University as well as data from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To help teams collaborate while employees are away from the office, Quip Starter will be available for free to any Salesforce customer or non-profit organization through September 30, 2020. Salesforce has also created a publicly-available Trailmix on Trailhead with tips on how to work from home and maintain personal well-being.

Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization and hyperconverged solutions, is offering a robust VDI solution that can help companies to setup secure remote work environments for their staff which enables them to continue operating their business during this time. Along with this, Scale Computing is also providing free webinars and information on how to use the VDI solution.

Sharpen Technologies launched the Sharpen Quick Start program to enable organizations stuck with legacy technology that can’t support work-at-home (WAH) agents to quickly take advantage of the cloud.

Mira Award winner SIMBA Chain is now offering a series of three, free online classes on how to build and deploy decentralized applications (dapps) using the company’s freemium low code blockchain platform. The micro-learning sessions are suitable for users of any skill level, from programmers or business people who want to up-skill their blockchain knowledge base. Advanced concepts in blockchain will also be introduced and additional training may be offered based on demand.

Splunk is providing Remote Work Insights to support the remote workforce. Remote Work Insights (RWI) empowers IT and Security teams to manage applications, monitor business performance and secure networks from remote locations. RWI provides real-time visibility across multiple disparate systems, such as VPN and Microsoft 365, alongside executive level dashboards to boost productivity and ensure high performance of your critical business activities. Remote Work Insights includes apps and add-ons, best practices, dashboards and more. Organizations can get started quickly via a cloud “Autobahn” environment. Click here for more details. Free training is also available for professional development. Splunk4Good dashboard resources and GitHub repository also are available as additional resources.

The Startup Ladies suggest these free apps, basing their usefulness on their own use of them.

Upper Hand posted Free Online Workouts and On-Demand Fitness Classes.