Duke used tech to minimize outbreaks. Can it teach businesses how to manage COVID?
While many colleges were forced to close their campuses because of the coronavirus this fall, Duke University stood out for maintaining a relatively safe environment around its campuses and hospitals in Durham.
It managed to keep thousands of students on campus and supported more than 20,000 hospital employees working on the front lines of the pandemic.
Now a startup affiliated with the university is hoping to leverage Duke’s knowledge to help local businesses navigate what remains of the pandemic.
COVID-19 has hammered small businesses, keeping customers away and providing daily health hazards to employees. It’s become a routine experience to see a social media post from a restaurant announcing it would be closed because a worker tested positive for COVID-19.
The closures come with panic for employees over their health and real economic loss for the business.
Greenlight Durham believes it can help lessen the pain by helping businesses access three critical things: monitoring, testing and recovery services.
The startup was born out of Duke’s Pandemic Response Network, a group that began in the weeks after Duke closed its satellite campus in China in January. That early experience gave researchers and officials at the university a head start for how to combat the spread of the virus, which caused the spring semester to go virtual weeks later.
The network then shifted to finding ways to get students back on campus, building policies to prevent widespread outbreaks (like mass testing) on campus.
It also created SymMon, a symptom monitoring app that tracked how students and employees were feeling every day. The app helped Duke stay alert about potential infections among the tens of thousands of people who live and work on its campuses.
“All of these things were happening on campus,” said Mark Sendak, the data science lead for the Duke Institute for Health Innovation. “We thought, ‘How do we build and push these out into the community?’”
So Sendak helped created Greenlight Durham and started conversations with the City of Durham about how the tech could be used to help local businesses.
It’s resulted in a pilot program, funded by relief money from the federal CARES Act, that is giving local businesses technology similar to SymMon and access to other resources, like free testing and connecting workers to social services.
Most critical, said Ryan Smith, of the city’s Office of Performance and Innovation, is the access to rapid testing.
“One of the things we were hearing from small businesses is how difficult it is to navigate testing,” Smith said in an interview.
Many businesses, Smith said, had workers who were exposed to the virus.
“In that moment panic ensues because they have no idea where to find testing” for everyone, Smith said. And then the businesses have to decide whether to close or not.
“We were looking for any additional support to navigate those moments,” Smith added.
Greenlight, through its connections at Duke, is able to coordinate a fast test any time an employee who is part of the pilot program triggers an alert through the monitoring system.
For Dorian Bolden, the owner of Beyu Caffe, the speed of those tests is key.
“We had a scare the other day that turned out to be negative,” said Bolden, who joined the pilot program in December. “But we were able to get the person tested the same day and get test results back over the weekend within 24 hours.”
“That is really timely information,” he added. “Everything is about speed right now because you don’t know how big or small the problem is when it starts with one employee.”
The funding for the program from Duke and the city is also helping alleviate financial calculations for Beyu around getting tests.
“These tests aren’t cheap, and if one employee tests positive then you clearly have to get other employees tested as well,” Bolden said. “Then all the sudden you could be spending a ton of money on tests.”
With Greenlight shouldering the cost and providing fast information, Bolden said, businesses can make the best decisions possible on how to operate.
Bolden thinks Greenlight could provide a lot of value even once vaccines are rolled out in large numbers. Even now, Sendak said, the startup is thinking about how to create a documentation technology around vaccinations. It’s also created a similar platform for schools.
“That would be huge,” Bolden said. “We need consumer confidence that people can come to a place safely.”
So far, the city has committed $44,000 to the pilot program of Greenlight Durham. Smith said the pilot test could support at least 3,500 workers across Durham.
“We think this is a very promising,” Smith said. “We have agreed to a modest investment to demonstrate what we think it can do.”
But the hope is that more funding will be found, especially as vaccine distribution continues to ramp up.
“In January, we will learn if there is a need for additional funding and how we can scale it,” Smith said.
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
This story was originally published January 2, 2021 at 9:00 AM.
