Every courier platform shows a map with dots on it. Medical work needs more than that: the clinic, the lab and sometimes a regulator will ask you to prove what happened to a specimen, and the software either has the answer or it does not. This checklist is what we would want answered before buying, written by people who run a medical courier operation every day.
The checklist
- Proof at pickup that is not a button press. A driver can tap "picked up" from the parking lot. Ask what proves the driver was at the box. StatVault: an NFC tap at the box, matched to the stop.
- A custody record on every order. When a lab says a specimen never arrived, you need who held it, where and when, in one place. StatVault: a custody timeline and tamper-evident audit trail on every order.
- Temperature from the box and the bag. Cold chain questions start before the van. StatVault: SmartBox reports temperature at the pickup point, and tags in vehicles and bags report through the driver's phone.
- A driver app that survives a basement. Hospitals are full of dead zones. Ask what happens to a tap with no signal. StatVault: a driver app on the phones drivers already own, with an offline outbox.
- Dispatch that knows who should take it. A list of drivers is not a decision. StatVault: a scorer that ranks drivers with reasons, and instant dispatch after hours for rules an admin explicitly turns on.
- A portal your clients will actually use. If ordering means a phone call, you are the bottleneck. StatVault: a customer portal for one-tap orders, tracking and history.
- Billing and pay checked before they go out. Small mistakes become disputes with clients and drivers. StatVault: a verify queue and pay equity on every order.
- Incident reports that start from the record. When something goes wrong, the report should not start from a blank page. StatVault: incident reports built from the order's own evidence.
- No rip-and-replace. Switching everything at once is how couriers lose a month. StatVault: runs alongside CXT and the rest of your stack.
- Proof it runs in production. A demo environment proves very little. StatVault: in production every day, across hundreds of stops a day.
Questions to ask any vendor
- Show me one real order's record, from the pickup tap to the delivery signature.
- What happens to a driver's taps and photos when the phone has no signal for a while?
- A lab says a specimen never arrived. Walk me through how I answer that.
- Which of my clients' staff can see their own orders, and what exactly do they see?
- What do I have to switch off on day one?
Related
- Alternatives to legacy medical courier software
- Medical courier software vs a generic TMS
- Specimen chain of custody
- Request a demo
Further reading: The Suite on One Page.