Through these short conversations, we try to understand what our customers think about us. Today we are going to Belgium, to discuss with M. François Claerhout, Head of Consultation and Home Visiting Department at ONE Belgium. The ONE (Birth and Childhood Office) is the reference organization of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels (French community of Belgium) for all questions related to childhood, childhood policies, medical and social support of the mother and child, support for parenthood, etc.

1. Could you explain what your activity consists of?

ONE (Birth and Childhood office) is a public organization whose missions concern early childhood and childhood in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, i.e. in the part of the Belgian territory where French is spoken.

The two main missions of the ONE consist, on the one hand, in the support of the child in and in relation with his/her family and social environment, and on the other hand, in the taking care of the child outside his/her family environment or during his/her free time.

Within the framework of its support mission, ONE deploys a network of approximately 600 consultation centres for the preventative psycho-medical and social follow-up of children and pregnant women.

2. Why is there a need of cold storage solutions in your business?

Within these consultation centres, the health professionals in charge of monitoring children and pregnant women are responsible for applying the preventative medicine guidelines that include the administration of vaccines recommended by the Vaccination Program of the Walloon-Brussels Federation. These vaccines are ordered from private pharmaceutical companies that deliver them to these centres as needed. As the vaccines must be kept at a temperature between +2°C and +8°C, each centre must have a vaccine storage system to preserve them.

3. Which products did you buy from B Medical Systems? For which purpose?

We have acquired L130 and L380 laboratory refrigerators.

4. What are the features that you liked the most? Could you please talk about the performances of the devices?

The features of these products that were the most critical to our decisionmaking process were the configurable alarms and the internal memory storage of temperature data. The size of the two models in question was a determining factor in our choice, as it was easy to place them in a variety of centres with widely varying company configurations.

5. How are you using the B Medical Systems products and how do they benefit your institution?

Since 2018, ONE has been supplying the largest consultation centres with specialized refrigerators acquired through a public procurement procedure. This contract was awarded to the exclusive importer of B Medical Systems’ products in Belgium, SHMC Medical Technologies. In accordance with our budgetary possibilities, we have been equipping the larger centres progressively for the last few years. The main benefit is a more reliable storage of the vaccines administered to children, coupled with the elimination of certain administrative tasks previously linked to this storage, such as the need to record temperature readings.

6. Have you found in B Medical Systems a trustworthy partner?

The delivery times of the devices have always been quite short, and very few anomalies have been recorded so far on the devices that have been delivered. As the importer SHMC oversees the after-sales service, it is also worth mentioning its good reactivity and the quality of the collaboration with it.

7. How did you learn about B Medical Systems?

Mainly through the resources and information available on the Internet, we discovered the B Medical Systems products during the market analysis phase that preceded the launch of the above-mentioned public procurement procedure.

8. How long have you been a B Medical Systems’ customer?

Since late 2018.

9. Are you satisfied with the equipment?

In general we are completely satisfied with the devices we have acquired so far.

10. Would you recommend B Medical Systems?

As a public company, we have a duty to respect the principles of non-discrimination, equal treatment, transparency, and proportionality inherent in public procurement legislation. Therefore, we can only encourage our partners to compare existing products on the market for each procurement, using award criteria adapted to their specific situation. Nevertheless, we also do not hesitate to tell them about our positive experience with B Medical Systems’ products during the execution of the public contract we have awarded.

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