Hoboken, New Jersey,
March 26, 2020 /PRNewswire/
-- Castor, a health-tech company that enables medical
researchers to capture machine readable data to optimize medical
decision making, announced the launch of its global COVID-19
monitoring and research platform to facilitate the rapid deployment
of trials to test Coronavirus vaccines and COVID-19 treatments.
After offering free access to their platform for all COVID-19
research projects in mid-February, Castor is now supporting over 50
studies.
Castor's platform includes an online enrollment portal for
patients, an eConsent module, and a Symptom Tracker app, all
integrated with Castor's Electronic Data Capture (EDC) system. This
platform is freely available for everyone fighting COVID-19,
including biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The platform
was designed to be rapidly configured and deployed.
Following easy online enrollment and eConsent, patients are
randomized in the EDC. Depending on country protocols, vaccines can
then be shipped to enrolled subjects and administered in their
homes. In addition, real-time dashboards enable study personnel to
monitor the population and proactively reach out to patients who
are showing symptoms of COVID-19. These patients could then be
enrolled in further interventional studies or triaged in a
hospital.
Launching the platform, Castor CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD, said: "High-quality data
and real-time access are critical in the fight against the COVID-19
pandemic. We are proud to support the global research effort by
launching a mobile-enabled solution that allows decentralized
patient participation and remote monitoring of study participants.
This will help reduce hospital crowding, protect staff, and
prioritize patients that need to be hospitalized."
Craig Serra, Global Head of
Strategy and Innovation, Data Operations at Novartis, and Castor
Advisory Board member, added: "With increased disruption to
clinical trials, it is essential for medical research to adopt
methods for remote engagement and monitoring, outside of a clinical
setting. Now is the time, more than ever, to stop talking about
solutions and take action on them."
Alongside this platform, Castor is supporting research into the
disease by providing free access to their research data platform
for all COVID-19 studies. By enabling large-scale decentralized
trials, Castor aims to accelerate the work of researchers who are
trying to combat the disease. Castor is currently supporting more
than 50 COVID-19 studies across nine countries. This includes
research projects at the University Hospital Southampton in the UK,
Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli in Italy, Vall d'Hebron Research Institute in
Spain, and UMC Utrecht in the
Netherlands.
Denise Van Hout, MD, an
Epidemiologist and member of the team at UMC Utrecht using Castor
to study COVID-19 preparedness of healthcare workers, added:
"In the race to understand and develop treatments and vaccines for
this disease, Castor's platform is making a difference by
supporting free research projects that can be rapidly built and
deployed."
For more information about Castor and the COVID-19 monitoring
and research platform please contact:
Castor
COVID-19 support team
covid19@castoredc.com
John Ambrose, Esq
Head of Marketing
john.ambrose@castoredc.com
Media & IR Enquiries
Optimum Strategic Communications
Mary Clark/ Hollie
Vile/Manel Mateus
Castor@optimumcomms.com
Tel: +44 (0) 20-3922-1906
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Castor
Based in Amsterdam, The
Netherlands and New Jersey,
US, Castor is an international health-tech company founded by CEO
Derk Arts, MD, PhD to leverage
machine readable data to increase clinical trial efficiency.
Castor's Electronic Data Capture (EDC) system enables every
researcher worldwide to easily capture and integrate medical
research data from any source in real-time, including clinicians,
patients, devices, wearables, and EHR systems.
More than 40,000 researchers across 90 countries are using
Castor to supercharge their research. Castor's platform has
supported more than 4,100 commercial and academic studies that
cover a broad range of disease areas including diabetes,
cardiovascular disease, rare diseases, infectious diseases, and
oncology. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data
from traditional and decentralized trials, and Castor recently
reached milestones of 140,000,000 data points and 1,500,000
enrolled patients. Castor's goal is to make the world's research
data reusable, enabling AI-driven clinical trials, and ultimately
creating a future in which they maximize the impact of data through
reuse.
In 2018 Castor raised $6.25m in
funding from early-stage investor INKEF Capital in the Netherlands.
Castor encourages all COVID-19 researchers in need of
standardized, high quality data to start their studies
by registering here, and to visit their online academy to
become familiar with the platform. The WHO-defined CRFs can be
downloaded here.
Website: www.castoredc.com
Twitter: @Castor
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/ciwit-b-v-
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SOURCE Castor