Vessel Connects is a consultant, procurer and distributor of premium mobile solutions to global healthcare enterprises. The company is on a mission to revolutionise the electronic collection of data from patients, doctors, and caregivers using handheld devices, so users can directly report the outcomes of clinical trials.
HMD Global supported the client in transitioning from handwritten notes to digitised patient data collection in clinical trials. For a client working in the healthcare space, reliability and cost-effectiveness were essential to maximise the accessibility of the IoT solution. With the HMD Connect Pro management console, deploying and managing clinical trials has become a seamless experience.
“This was a new service for us,” explains Scott Farmer, Director of Sales and Business Development at Vessel. “Typically, when we provision the hardware, telecom services are sourced independently. When we discovered the HMD Connect Pro management console, we knew this IoT connectivity solution would add tremendous value for our customers. Essentially, we’re putting our client directly in touch with HMD Global to solve their biggest needs.”
“For this particular trial, we chose HMD Global over other mobile vendors for the ease of doing business with them,” says Farmer. “HMD is large enough to deliver reliable solutions and service, yet they’re small enough to react quickly when we need them. With HMD Connect Pro supporting medical trials, dependability is extremely important, and the software never let us down.”
Healthcare today is a data-driven industry, and Vessel needed a partner that would keep them in the driving seat. For Farmer, “HMD Global had the expertise and willingness to help us where others would have struggled. The Connect Pro management console is so simple, and we can oversee all SIM cards in our global fleet in real-time. We no longer have to guess how our SIMs are being used – now, we know exactly what’s going on.”
In addition to delivering a new way of managing patient data, Vessel looked to HMD Global to advise on the optimal IoT connectivity strategy. “We were impressed with the HMD team’s responsiveness,” says Farmer. “Their support network is centralised, with very few points of contact, which made it stress-free to work with them.”
“We always had our eye on HMD Global,” recalls Farmer. “It was probably their market penetration around the globe that really intrigued us, and kick-started our conversations. With growing trade rules and regulations, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ship hardware into countries. The HMD team made it easy.”
Vessel wanted to achieve a global market penetration with minimal SKUs. HMD Global helped them identify the most appropriate device for these requirements, whilst ensuring all handsets and SIMs were certified to enter global regions. “HMD Global were fantastic with helping us map out two SKUs within a single model, so we did not need to purchase many models to enter numerous territories,” says Farmer.
For Vessel, finding a partner with a robust supply chain set-up for components was pivotal. “Everything happens in our world quickly, and we cannot afford to neglect patient timelines due to electronic component shortages,” Farmer explains. “We found HMD Global to have a sense of urgency that’s unrivalled by some of their competitors, and we can rely on them to leverage multiple manufacturing partners to deliver relevant components when we need them.”
For the medical staff, HMD Connect Pro was a game-changer. They required a simple set-up process to deliver clinical testing as quickly as possible. HMD Global ensured the mobile phones arrived deployment-ready and pre-integrated with the existing mobile device management (MDM) software, Microsoft InTune.
“HMD Global made loading proprietary software onto the devices as easy as possible for our customers,” Farmer recalls. “The interface on the Connect Pro console is extremely user-friendly. It gives you just the right amount of information, making it far more intuitive and useful than others we’ve seen.” Since all SIM connections can be viewed and managed on an aggregate level via the intuitive central management console, this platform differs fundamentally from traditional data SIM management.
Working closely with Vessel and their customers, HMD Global delivered an effortless onboarding onto the Connect Pro platform, and continues to help users maximise its potential as they plan for the future of healthcare.