Last updated on June 30, 2020
For existing and new Castor customers
Castor will continue to deliver its services without interruption. Our teams have always been equipped to work from home, and can do so effectively. Phone lines have been routed to two applicable team members per phone line. Our availability during business hours will not be affected nor will the availability of our platform.
How Castor’s technology is supporting the fight against the Coronavirus outbreak and COVID-19
Castor has joined the global fight against the Coronavirus by making our research data capture system available for free for all COVID-19 research projects. As of June 30, Castor is supporting more than 250 COVID-19 studies in 22 countries across 1,750 hospitals. 62,000 participants are enrolled in these trials and more than 10,000,000 data points have been captured. Since time is of the essence, we have enabled these studies to go live within 6.5 days on average.
We have developed ready for use eCRFs based on the WHO standard CRFs, to help researchers start their study or registry in less than an hour. The lack of quality data should not be the reason for a delay in developing vaccines and treatments.
When novel strains of viruses like the Coronavirus (which causes COVID-19) emerge, data quickly becomes our most valuable asset. This was true during the recent Ebola outbreak, where we already had decades of research into the effects and possible treatments, and it is doubly true when considering the new strain of Coronavirus.
So what can we do to help? As a leading medical research tool, it turns out we can do a lot, and frankly we have a moral obligation to do so. We can help drive access to standardized data in real-time, enable the use of AI across standardized datasets, and accelerate the discovery of evidence that can help manage the Coronavirus outbreak.
To effectively fight the new Coronavirus, we need to ensure our technology is available to anyone joining the fight, and that we’re contributing as many additional resources as possible to researchers involved. With this in mind, Castor will be doing the following:
- We’ve developed and released a new COVID-19 monitoring and research platform, a mobile-enabled solution that allows decentralized patient participation and remote monitoring of study participants.
- Castor’s Electronic Data Capture (EDC) system is now free for all Coronavirus registries and studies globally.
- We created standardized forms based on WHO CRFs and they’ll help guarantee researchers can get up and running fast.
- We’re providing a hosted FAIR data point with all related research catalogs (datasets).
Click here to view details on some of the COVID-19 studies running on Castor, including a groundbreaking machine-learning trial to improve ICU bed allocation, a study of how the disease is affecting immunosuppressed children, and a study characterizing the breath sounds associated with the disease.
If you are a researcher or organization planning to capture data on COVID-19, please contact us at [email protected] to receive your billing code. You can already start your study by registering here, and going through our online academy to become familiar with the platform. The WHO-defined CRFs can be downloaded here.
Castor is committed to supporting researchers worldwide to understand this disease and find treatments and vaccines. We are therefore providing researchers with free access to our platform and an upgraded level of service (Gold SLA). To be able to provide you with the billing code and upgraded account, we ask that you provide us with information on your study by filling out this form. This will help us organize all of the ongoing COVID-19 research projects in Castor, and foster effective collaboration.
Free access to Castor for COVID-19 studies during 2020 includes Castor’s base platform and may include more. Please contact us for more details.
