Castor is part of a shoal of startups seeking to change how clinical trials are executed. Last year, venture capitalists pumped $45m into the company, positioning it to build on its data capture capabilities and work to scale direct-to-patient trials globally.
An expansion into real-world evidence (RWE) is the next stop on the roadmap. Seeing the potential for RWE to transform-based medicine, Castor CEO and co-founder Derk Arts has overseen the development of a service designed to help sponsors realize that potential.
“Our latest offering simplifies the creation of RWE into clinical trials and supports life science companies in their pursuit of drug discovery and development goals,” Arts said.
The new offering supports post-marketing clinical trials. By integrating real-world data sources such as patient-reported outcomes and wearables, Castor hopes to increase patient access and retention while improving data quality and compliance.
Sponsors pick the pre-configured modules that meet the needs of their studies and use the system to integrate their data. Because the data is standardized, the system is designed to eliminate the burden of manual data transcription and standardization.
Castor has grouped the capabilities into three packages, running from a basic offering for recruiting, consenting and engaging participants virtually through to more complete solutions that integrate data capture and tokenization. Interest in tokenization has increased as researchers have identified it as a way to simplify follow up in long-term studies.
The packages are intended to help life science companies to meet regulatory and payer requirements efficiently. Castor claims more than 90% of its studies are deployed within the first four weeks and that it can reduce trial costs by 30%.