The novel coronavirus has immobilized people and many businesses as efforts to contain its spread are underway.
 
One thing that has not been immobilized is technology, now being further used to work from home, communicate with others and pass the time with Netflix and YouTube.
 
Local companies and residents are also using technology to provide new ways to continue to serve their clients and the community.
 
A Wilmington resident recently developed StayNeighbor, a community platform connecting those in need of resources with those who can provide them.
 
The idea for the web-based app originated in the shower and was developed more through Reddit, Sam Hilsman, originator of StayNeighbor, said.
 
“My wife works in the nonprofit world, so I am acutely aware of the complexity around accessing resources and basic needs,” Hilsman said. “It’s not that those resources are unavailable, but getting in touch with the correct group for the correct set of resources in the correct area can be challenging.
 
“I figured that having a central platform to request basic needs and services and a single queue for nonprofits and organizations to work from would maximize accessibility to those resources and maximize efficiency in meeting community needs,” he added.
 
StayNeighbor has partnered with Crisis Cleanup, is a disaster work order management platform.
 
Through the StayNeighbor website (stayneighbor.com), community members can fill out a request form to indicate a basic need or service; others can also request on their behalf.
 
StayNeighbor feeds those requests to Crisis Cleanup where community organizations and nonprofits can log in and view the needs on a map and use their existing resources to fill those needs as they can.
 
Hilsman is a system administrator at New Hanover Regional Medical Center and received help from people from Texas to New York To Virginia and other places who donated their expertise to help develop the platform.
 
He hopes the platform is able to help meet the needs of the community.
 
“I think I can speak for the entire StayNeighbor team when I say that we hope to help as many people as possible during this crisis,” Hilsman said. “We don’t want any profits; we just want to leverage our skillsets to be a valuable asset to communities around the country.”
 
Community organizations and nonprofits that wish to participate should go to crisiscleanup.org/ register.
 
Meanwhile, one local company responded to COVID-19 by building a new program.
 
CastleBranch, a Wilmington- based compliance management and infectious disease screening company, built a platform that helps screen individuals for COVID-19 symptoms at no cost to the health care education community through December 2020, according to a news release.
 
The platform is called CB COVID-19 Compliance, which screens for common COVID-19 symptoms such as fever by asking participants to provide their temperature twice a day for 14 days before returning to a hospital, school or work. It also gathers information on an individual’s travel and exposure to the coronavirus.
 
Another local company is reaching out to the business community during the pandemic.
 
While CloudWyze offices are closed, workers are operating remotely, said Shaun Olsen, the CEO and president of the local business technology company and internet service provider.
 
“I don’t think we’ve necessarily skipped a beat, and we actually practice this as part of our disaster planning,” Olsen said. “Our clients that we work with come to us for a reason. A big part of that is the ability to work from anywhere. A lot of our customers and clients are obviously taking full advantage of that right now.”
 
Throughout the last month, CloudWyze rolled out an offer to businesses that signed up for cloudbased services, including free expedited migration and implementation and three free months of service and support.
 
“There’s a lot of uncertainty, and we know budgets are already tight and people are having payroll and employee challenges,” Olsen said about why CloudWyze launched the offer. “We were trying to figure out ways that we can help to get people that have been on the fence of what they want to do or are now in a position where they need to pull the trigger but don’t necessarily know specifically what their entire budget is going to look like moving forward.”
 
Besides extending offers to new clients, CloudWyze is working with current clients to ensure that they can survive these difficult times.
 
“We have a number of customers that are going through some challenging times and obviously we’re working with them on payment delays and no fees,” Olsen said, “pretty much anything we can do in order to make sure that they are continuing to operate as a business.”