HOW CHICAGO TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES ARE STEPPING UP TO MEET TODAY’S CHALLENGES AND TO BUILD A STRONGER MORE CONNECTED CITY

By Brad Henderson (Chief Executive Officer, P33) and Penny Pritzker (Founder and Chairman of PSP Partners; 38th Secretary of Commerce; and Co-Founder and Co-Chair, P33)

 While the past 12 months have been filled with incredible challenges for everyone across the globe as we all grapple with the impacts of COVID-19 and the pains from decades of racial inequity that still exist in our society, Chicago’s tech community has stepped forward to work to provide solutions. Working with the city, the state, healthcare providers, and P33, our entrepreneurs have risen to the challenges presented by the COVID 19 pandemic.

 In August, P33, Open Commons Consortium (OCC) and MATTER launched the Chicagoland COVID-19 Data Commons (CCC), a centralized data platform created in partnership with regional healthcare providers, to help clinicians, researchers and community advocates understand how the disease behaves within the Chicagoland population. The CCC allows hospitals and healthcare organizations to upload data into a shared, open-source digital platform for granular analysis of the virus at the community level. For a city like Chicago made up of numerous neighborhoods with diverse populations, this is critical. For example, the impact of COVID on Illinois residents has been particularly hard on Black and Latinx communities. NPR reported more than 70% of the city's first coronavirus deaths were among the Black population. With the data commons, community leaders could tailor their neighborhoods’ response to COVID-19 based on their residents’ needs.

 Metopio, a Chicago-based data solution firm launched in 2016, has also been collecting COVID-19 data to understand how places and populations are being impacted. Using their aggregated deidentified data around the pandemic, Metopio’s tool allows anyone to analyze and produce powerful visualizations in minutes. Making their datasets available to all registered users at no cost, Metopio has lifted up research out of academia and put it in the hands of decision-makers to address issues like food insecurity.

 Small businesses are facing tough questions regarding keeping their workers and customers safe. Access to PPE is critical to their survival. Rheaply, a Chicago-based asset management tech company launched in 2016, stepped up. In the wake of the pandemic, Rheaply CEO, Garry Cooper pivoted the team’s efforts toward developing a free-to-use Emergency Resource Exchange (ERx) to help local small businesses gain easy access to channels for PPE. The ERx bridged the gap between medical centers experiencing shortages and organizations able to provide immediate relief. The team’s pivot is a prime example of the adaptive nature of technology, and how it can drive collaboration and change.

 Errand Solutions is a virtual personal assistance platform that serves more than 4 million users. When the pandemic hit, CEO Marsha McVicker and her team jumped in to help ease some of the immerse pressure and stress that our first responders and health care workers were experiencing. The team launched the To the Rescue app, which supports our brave frontline workers with their day-to-day errands so they can focus on fighting the virus. To the Rescue helps with everything from negotiating bills, locating assistance for virtual learning, to getting groceries. Errand Solutions also unveiled the Pay It Forward option that allows users to deem members of their community as heroes and donate errands, like laundry service, to show gratitude. This woman-founded company is also intentional about focusing its list of vendors to local minority-owned businesses.

Additionally, our Chicago area academic institutions have stepped up to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. To address our country’s shortage of ventilators, a team of more than 40 engineers, doctors, and medical professionals at The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign launched an Apollo 13-style project to rapidly manufacture ventilators. Further, the University took a data driven, scientific approach to reopening campus. It utilized extensive rapid testing, social distancing, mask enforcement, and contact tracing developing a Pandemic Response System that intentionally and respectfully integrated technology into the daily lives of their students and staff. This system includes the COVID-19 SHIELD protocols for identifying high-risk individuals, testing on a widespread basis utilizing an innovative U of I-developed saliva test, and utilizing digital and manual contact tracing. The New York Times profiled UIUC’s opening calling it “one of the most comprehensive plans by a major college to keep the virus under control."

As Chicagoans, stories like these should make us all proud. We at P33 see our work – to turbocharge our tech sector - as more important and relevant than ever. Our focus at P33 is to build a stronger, more interconnected community to drive innovation and inclusive economic growth for all Chicagoans. Make no mistake, greater support for our technology ecosystem is an investment to transform our city across every sector and improve the well-being of its residents. We are proud of how our community quickly sprung into action to respond to COVID-19, and as we start to see relief with the distribution of a vaccine, we must build on the momentum from the drive and collaboration it took to get us to this point to build a better Chicago for all our residents.