Hoboken, New Jersey: December 17, 2020: Castor, a leading provider of clinical trial technology, today announced the launch of its scalable end-to-end decentralized clinical trial (DCT) platform.
With this launch, Castor is meeting the increasing demand in the market for technology that makes trials more patient centric and enables a hybrid approach (in-home or site-based) to trial visits, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. The platform includes modules to support remote enrollment, remote eConsent, native patient-facing apps, a complete EDC, and integrated real-time reporting capabilities.
On launching the DCT platform, Castor CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD, said: “Castor has always had a strong focus on patient-centric and technology-enabled trials, as I believe these trials will become the reference standard for the life sciences industry. In the past nine months we focused our product development on creating a platform that makes these trials scalable, as we see an enormous bottleneck in the industry on launching these technologically challenging trials in acceptable timelines.”
The launch comes on the back of a high impact year for Castor, in which they supported the World Health Organization with their landmark Solidarity trials on COVID vaccines and treatments, and supported more than 300 COVID-related trials pro bono. In the second half of the year, commercial growth was 383% compared to the same period in 2019. A major commercial milestone was winning a contract for multiple cross-country eConsent projects with a top 10 pharma company.
Castor will be working closely with the recently launched Decentralized Trials & Research Alliance (DTRA) as one of the founding members to ensure the successful adoption of this technology.
Craig Lipset, DTRA Co-Convener and Castor Advisory Board member, said: “The pandemic has catalyzed the adoption of decentralized clinical trials, and sponsors are increasingly making it clear that there is no going back. While many embraced flexible participation as a necessity for business continuity, they are committing to these approaches to improve patient access, experience, and diversity.”
Castor’s key achievements in 2020 include:
Raised a $12M Series A from Two Sigma Ventures with participation from Hambrecht Ducera Growth Ventures and existing investor INKEF Capital
Powering 300+ COVID projects pro bono at 1,750+ hospitals across 35+ countries
Developed Advisory Board with industry leaders including Craig Lipset, Cherié L. Butts, PhD, and Sarah F. Fisher
About Castor
Based in the United States and The Netherlands, Castor is an international health-tech company founded by CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD. Their cloud-based clinical data platform simplifies the clinical trial process, from recruitment to analysis, for researchers worldwide.
More than 65,000 researchers across 90 countries are using Castor to supercharge their research. Castor’s platform has supported more than 4,000 commercial and academic studies that cover a broad range of therapeutic areas including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, rare diseases, infectious diseases, and oncology. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and remote trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 250,000,000 data points and 2,200,000 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 2020, Castor raised a $12M Series A from Two Sigma Ventures with participation from Hambrecht Ducera Growth Ventures and existing investor INKEF Capital. Castor previously raised a $6.25M seed round from INKEF Capital in 2018. LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/ciwit-b-v- Twitter: www.twitter.com/castor
Industry veterans from leading life sciences companies including Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, and Medtronic, will support the Company’s vision to advance the future of clinical research
Hoboken, New Jersey: December 8, 2020: Castor, a leading provider of clinical trial technology that automates the research process, today announced the expansion of its independent Advisory Board.
Castor is a leading cloud-based clinical data platform that simplifies the clinical trial process, from recruitment to analysis, for researchers globally. It’s used by more than 65,000 users across academia and commercial research, powering more than 4,000 studies with more than 2,200,000 enrolled patients across 90 countries. 204 medical device, biotech, and pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations (CROs) are using Castor’s platform.
Over the past year, Castor’s Advisory Board has been instrumental in helping the company navigate the pandemic and support COVID-19 research around the world. This includes the World Health Organization’s Solidarity Trial. The Advisory Board also played a key role during the development and launch of the company’s new remote recruitment, screening, and consent solution, Castor eConsent.
Castor has continuously looked for additional industry veterans to expand the Advisory Board and have been fortunate to secure Sarah F. Fisher, Cherié L. Butts, PhD, andJanine Lane. These individuals bring tremendous expertise across commercial life sciences research and innovation, currently holding leadership positions at Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, and Medtronic. They will provide invaluable guidance to help the company achieve its vision 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.
On welcoming the members, Castor CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD, said: “With COVID-19 propelling decentralized trials due to necessity, we need to continue this momentum beyond the pandemic and work together as an industry to advance clinical trial technology and practices. With our expanded Advisory Board and continuous innovation in our technology, Castor is ready to power global decentralized and hybrid clinical trials for years to come.”
Cherié L. Butts, PhD, Medical Director and Head of Clinical Assessments at Biogen and newly appointed Castor Advisory Board member, commented: “I am excited to serve on Castor’s Advisory Board and work with the team on better ways to leverage academic and industry research. Castor’s decentralized trial technology makes it easier for patients to participate in clinical trials, and to remain engaged. Furthermore, Castor’s vision for machine readable, reusable research data across studies will help ensure all captured patient data has maximum impact.”
The new Advisory Board members include:
Sarah F. Fisher, MBA, Global Health Financing Lead at Johnson & Johnson
Cherié L. Butts, PhD, Medical Director and Head of Clinical Assessments – Digital & Quantitative Medicine at Biogen
Janine Lane, Senior Director of Medical Affairs at Medtronic
Craig Lipset, MBA, Former Head of Clinical Innovation at Pfizer, and Advisor/Board Member at various life sciences startups
Niels van Royen, MD, PhD, Head of the Cardiology Department at Radboud University Medical Center
Thomas Wurdinger, PhD, Director of the Neuro-Oncology Research Group and Professor at the Amsterdam UMC Cancer Center; Founder of thromboDx (acquired by Illumina)
For full biographies please see below.
About Castor
Based in the United States and The Netherlands, Castor is an international health-tech company founded by CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD. Their cloud-based clinical data platform simplifies the clinical trial process, from recruitment to analysis, for researchers worldwide.
More than 65,000 researchers across 90 countries are using Castor to supercharge their research. Castor’s platform has supported more than 4,000 commercial and academic studies that cover a broad range of therapeutic areas including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, rare diseases, infectious diseases, and oncology. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and remote trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 250,000,000 data points and 2,200,000 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 2020, Castor raised a $12M Series A from Two Sigma Ventures with participation from Hambrecht Ducera Growth Ventures and existing investor INKEF Capital. Castor previously raised a $6.25M seed round from INKEF Capital in 2018.
Castor Advisory Board
Sarah F. Fisher, MBA
Sarah F. Fisher is the Global Health Financing Lead at Johnson & Johnson. She has 18 years of experience in leading new business development efforts across a breadth of healthcare areas in global markets including: MedTech (class III, novel, PMA), Drug/Device combination technologies and services, Informatics and Digital, Disease Prevention and Interception, Supply Chain and Operations, Real World Data Platforms, Strategic Partnerships, Public Health, and Venture Diligence.
Sarah serves as venture partner to select investors, an advisory board member to select ventures, and as the healthcare subgroup lead for the International Venture Club based in the EU. She was awarded the first-ever Corporate Entrepreneur accolade by Corporate Entrepreneurs, LLC, and was named a Global Corporate Venturing Rising Star in 2016.
Sarah has a Masters of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship from Babson College in Wellesley, MA and a post -graduate diploma in Global Business from the University of Oxford in Oxford, UK.
Cherié L. Butts, PhD
Cherié L. Butts is the Medical Director and Head of Clinical Assessments – Digital & Quantitative Medicine at Biogen. She obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University, a doctorate from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. She continued research at the US Food & Drug Administration, taking on additional responsibilities of evaluating drug and biologics applications. At Biogen, she is responsible for use of novel clinical measurement tools as a mechanism for better understanding disease biology, reducing trial burden, and ensuring trials better represent those afflicted with disease.
Cherié is passionate about connecting the work in academia, government, and industry to advance biomedical research and works with scientific professional societies and related organizations to help scientists and clinicians learn about the interconnectedness of scientific contributions across these sectors – at and away from the bench or clinic. She currently serves on the Leadership Board of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Board of Directors of Keystone Symposia; Vice Chair on the Board of Trustees at Salem State University; Council of the Society of Leukocyte Biology; and is Adjunct Professor at University of Maryland.
Janine Lane
Janine Lane is the Senior Director of Medical Affairs at Medtronic with her current focus being interventional cardiology and hypertension. In this global role she and her team are responsible for scientific and clinical communication for both Medtronic sponsored and physician initiated clinical studies, engagement with a broad array of physicians and institutions to encourage informed clinical decision making leveraging existing data.
With experience in the clinical world for over 35 years and at Medtronic for almost 30 years, Janine has seen how the practice of medicine can be transformed with access to credible data with many patient lives changed in positive ways. She has also experienced the impact of the absence of evidence in a timely fashion leading to confusion, waste and poor outcomes.
Janine started her clinical and corporate career in Australia before moving to the United States in 1996 where she worked closely on FDA interactions, including panel meetings, influencing clinical trial design and data acquisition approaches for Medtronic. Janine has also partnered with an array of thought leaders in the field of interventional cardiology and more recently the management of hypertension.
Craig Lipset, MBA
Craig Lipset is a recognized leader at the forefront of innovation in clinical research and medicine development. He is an advisor to technology and biopharmaceutical companies, leading universities, and the venture community, bringing vision and driving action at the intersection of research, digital solutions, and patient engagement.
Craig was the Head of Clinical Innovation and Venture Partner at Pfizer, on the founding Operations Committee for TransCelerate Biopharma, and on the founding management teams for two successful startup ventures (Perceptive Informatics and Adnexus Therapeutics). During that time, Craig designed and launched multiple industry firsts. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research, the MedStar Health Research Institute, and the People-Centered Research Foundation (the central office for PCORnet), as well as on the Editorial Board for Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science.
Niels van Royen, MD, PhD
Niels van Royen studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam and received his doctorate degree in 1998. In 2003 he obtained – with honors – his PhD on research in collateral artery. The research was conducted in collaboration with the Max-Planck Institute in Bad Nauheim and the University of Freiburg.
Niels specialized in Cardiology in AMC Amsterdam (2003-2008). In 2010 he started as a cardiologist at the VU Medical Center. In 2012 he was appointed as Professor of Intervention Cardiology. Here he has set up translational research lines focusing on repair in ischemic heart diseases.
Thomas Wurdinger, PhD
Thomas Wurdinger studied molecular biology at VU University in Amsterdam and performed his PhD at Utrecht University. After his postdoc period at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital he now holds a position as Director of the Neuro-Oncology Research Group and Professor at the Amsterdam UMC Cancer Center.
Thomas’ mission is to eliminate late-stage cancers, including brain cancer. His passion for research goes hand in hand with an ambition for entrepreneurship applied to a field with societal importance, e.g. by capturing sequencing data and designing deep learning algorithms to detect cancer from a tube of blood. He strives to translate academic research into clinical applications. This is why he founded two biotech companies, with thromboDx focusing on blood platelet-based diagnostics (acquired by Illumina), and the second being Exbiome BV, which sets out to use microRNAs for diagnostic purposes. Thomas was also one of the first directors of research at GRAIL Inc, a unicorn company aiming to detect cancer early when it can be cured. He is a recipient of the Galenus Research Award and several ERC grants.
Hoboken, New Jersey: March 10, 2021: Castor, a leading provider of clinical trial technology, today announced the signing of a top-5 pharmaceutical company and expansion of its global team.
2020 was a defining year for Castor. The company launched its scalable decentralized clinical trial platform and integrated product offerings that created the foundation for the company to realize 383% commercial growth. Castor now has more than 400 recurring paying customers, including a top-5 pharma company signed in Q1.
On the early success of 2021, Castor CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD, said “Historically, our products saw the strongest traction in the mid-market, but it’s clear that all segments are in need of a scalable, self-service platform to run more patient-centric trials. We are seeing growth in the big pharma segment ahead of our own plans, which is an indication of how COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of innovation.”
Looking forward, the company plans for 2021 to become the year in which they make decentralized trials scale, getting the technology in the hands of as many users as possible. Castor has a track-record in global study deployments, having supported more than 7,500 studies on its platform. The company will continue to deploy its suite of tools to enable enrollment, screening, and consenting in a fully remote or hybrid fashion. In parallel, the company’s mobile offerings are also expanding with the imminent release of its new ePRO app for iOS and Android.
Additionally, the company plans to capitalize on their investments in data standardization, by letting their first users experiment with digital twins: synthetic patients generated from metadata available from previous projects and the actual patients in the trial.
“For the future growth of Castor, it is instrumental that we keep looking for the best talent out there. We added more than 35 new hires to our ranks in the past four months, with a combined industry experience of more than 200 years,” said Derk. Castor’s new hires include the following:
Daniel Silva joins Castor’s Management team as VP of Customer Success and brings more than 20 years of experience in building customer success organizations at Oracle, TraceLink, and endpoint Clinical. “As a young technology company grows, it is crucial to have a scalable customer success model in place that can continue to provide customers with a superior overall experience,” said Dan. “Castor’s customers rate our products and services as one of the best in the eClinical industry*. I am excited to have the opportunity to continue to provide our customers with an outstanding experience as we double the number of customers in the coming year.”
Senior Product Manager Sébastien Bohn brings more than 20 years of product management experience in the life sciences space at IBM, Merge Healthcare (acquired by IBM), and KIKA Medical International (acquired by Merge eClinical). “With Castor I see a massive opportunity to scale decentralized clinical trials for the first time, thanks to a technology-first approach, consisting of multiple native integrated product lines. This includes recruitment landing pages, enrollment, eConsent, EDC, reporting, and data analysis,” said Sébastien.
Director of Quality and Compliance Fatma Elfaghi brings more than 10 years of experience in managing compliance and regulatory affairs at Anju Software and OmniComm Systems. “It is amazing to see the foundation of Castor’s platform and the compliance procedures and documentation already in place that have resulted in successfully completed audits from major pharmaceutical companies,” said Fatma.
Castor is determined to hire more than 30 additional people in Q2 and Q3 to expand its global team.
About Castor
Based in the United States and The Netherlands, Castor is an international health-tech company founded by CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD. Their cloud-based clinical data platform simplifies the clinical trial process, from recruitment to analysis, for researchers worldwide.
More than 75,000 researchers across 90 countries are using Castor to supercharge their research. Castor’s platform has supported more than 7,500 commercial and academic studies that cover a broad range of therapeutic areas including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, rare diseases, infectious diseases, and oncology. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and remote trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 250,000,000 data points and 2,500,000 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 2020, Castor raised a $12M Series A from Two Sigma Ventures with participation from Hambrecht Ducera Growth Ventures and existing investor INKEF Capital. Castor previously raised a $6.25M seed round from INKEF Capital in 2018. LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/ciwit-b-v- Twitter: www.twitter.com/castor
*Castor rated 4.7 out of 5 stars, from more than 100 customer reviews on Capterra.
A majority of Dutch academic medical centers are collaborating with Castor EDC to capture standardized medical research data
Health-tech scale-up is helping the Netherlands lead the way in applying FAIR data in medical research
Amsterdam, Netherlands – September 4, 2019
Castor EDC has issued two more site licenses to major Dutch university medical centers. The data capture platform is now available to all researchers at the University Medical Center of Utrecht (UMCU) and the AMC location of the Amsterdam UMC. This provides them with a user-friendly means of capturing, integrating and standardizing research data.
Five of the eight UMCs in the Netherlands currently hold a site license for the platform. With these new partnerships, Castor’s advanced tools are now in use at all the major medical centers in the Netherlands. This means that the majority of medical researchers in the Netherlands can now store and process research data according to FAIR principles, thanks to Castor EDC.
FAIR Data: Faster, better results
The FAIR Data Principles are a set of guiding principles that aim to make medical research data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. The goal of FAIR is to enable researchers around the world to benefit from each other’s research data. Ultimately, FAIR makes it easier for researchers to collaborate, lowers costs, and improves research infrastructure and quality. These principles are aligned with Castor’s goal of “helping accelerate medical research by unlocking the potential of every byte of research data.”
“Saving time in a race against the clock”
The UMCU has expressed its trust in working with Castor. Above all, the medical center values the emphasis that Castor places on FAIR. “FAIR data is above all about saving time in a race against the clock, which is exactly what finding treatments and medicines often is,” says Teus Kappen, MD, PhD, Chief Science Information Officer at UMCU. “By making information accessible and reusable via Castor EDC, we will be able to make progress faster than previously possible.”
Chris Polman, PhD, a member of the Board of Directors at the Amsterdam UMC, is also impressed with the possibilities that Castor EDC offers: “Castor is already being widely used at the VUmc location of the Amsterdam UMC, so it is a logical step to have a site license for both locations. This will enable all of our researchers to capture data in a manner that is secure and compliant. It is also important that the data we collect can be reused for further research wherever possible. Castor also supports us during the implementation to capture data in accordance with FAIR data principles.”
Progress for the Netherlands in medical research worldwide
Once all the major research centers are using a FAIR system, the data they capture can be used optimally, says Barend Mons, PhD, one of the academics behind the FAIR data initiative. “Readily usable research data is essential to maintaining a high level of innovation. The fact that Dutch medical centers are taking this idea seriously gives them an advantage in the research world. The Castor platform perfectly translates FAIR principles into a practical, user-friendly environment.”
Gaining traction in academia
For Castor EDC, the new investment from UMCU and the contract with the Amsterdam UMC are important steps, enabling the company to now serve the majority of Dutch medical research centers. “For us, this is a perfect opportunity to support medical research in the Netherlands and implement FAIR data more quickly,” says Derk Arts, MD, PhD, Founder and CEO of Castor. “This investment is also an important step for our platform. Along with the collaboration with the Leiden University Medical Center, we are gaining even more traction in the academic world.”
Castor launches at the UMCU and AMC
Soon, 2,000 researchers at the UMCU and 2,500 at the AMC will be using Castor. It is important to ensure that the integration of the platform at these medical centers runs as smoothly as possible. That is why Castor will play an active role in implementing the platform. Through launch events featuring speakers, training sessions for each department and masterclasses about medical research, all researchers will have an opportunity to get to know the application.
About Castor EDC
Castor EDC was founded in 2012 by Derk Arts and has already captured 100,000,000+ data points since its inception. The data capture platform hosts more than 4,000 research projects in over 220 internationally renowned academic and commercial institutions including Leiden UMC and Radboud UMC in The Netherlands, King’s College Hospital in London, and Akron Children’s Hospital and Nebraska Methodist in the US, as well as Philips and Xcenda. Today, more than 30,000 academic, medical device, biotech and pharmaceutical professionals use Castor EDC, spread over 50 countries, with the majority in the Netherlands, UK and US.
In 2017, the company received a €1.1 million subsidy from the EU under the Horizon 2020 initiative of the European Commission. In 2018, it attracted around €5 million from investors at INKEF Capital who specialize in healthcare. Castor has over 50 employees across offices in Amsterdam and the United States. Learn more at castoredc.com.
Castor establishes new US operations, building on leadership position across the EU
Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Hoboken, New Jersey, USA, October 7, 2019: Castor, a health-tech company that helps medical researchers maximize the value of research data, today announces its international business expansion. By strengthening its presence in the US and the EU, Castor can enable more researchers and commercial companies around the world to accelerate the discovery of evidence that cures diseases.
Castor’s Electronic Data Capture (EDC) platform enables every researcher worldwide to easily capture and integrate medical research data from any source in real-time, including clinicians, patients, devices and wearables. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and decentralized trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 100,000,000 data points and 1,000,000 enrolled patients. Castor EDC is now used by 90% of academic institutions in The Netherlands and is helping the country increase its influence in the international research community. It has also grown rapidly across the EU, the UK and the US, partnering with several research institutions including University Medical Centre Hamburg, King’s College London, Texas A&M University, and Nebraska Methodist Health System.
To provide further support to US commercial companies and academic institutions, Castor has expanded its operations to the US with the appointment of Frank Cesaro as Head of Global Sales. Cesaro is based in Castor’s new offices in New Jersey and is actively expanding the team and partnering with leading medical device, biotech and pharma companies. Cesaro’s extensive industry experience and established track record includes serving as Head of Sales at Zocdoc, a US based health-tech company.
Derk Arts, Castor’s Founder and CEO, stated: “Our mission is to standardize data using machine learning and create the most extensive, diverse, and distributed medical research dataset the world has ever seen. This will enable the medical community to discover potential cures for diseases at an unprecedented pace. 2019 has been a transformational year for Castor as we doubled our headcount and are now supporting more than 30,000 biotechnology, medical device, pharmaceutical, and academic researchers across over 90 countries. Frank’s appointment will enable us to build on our success in the European market and accelerate the development of our US business.”
As one of the first companies to leverage machine readable data for clinical research, Castor’s platform will enable AI-driven clinical trials and provide invaluable insights to commercial research. It currently hosts more than 4,000 research projects in more than 220 internationally renowned academic and commercial institutions including Stryker, Xcenda, and EIP Pharma.
Based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and New Jersey, US, Castor is an international health-tech company founded in 2012 by CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD to help medical researchers maximize the value of research data. Castor’s Electronic Data Capture (EDC) platform enables every researcher worldwide to easily capture and integrate medical research data from any source in real-time, including clinicians, patients, devices and wearables.
Castor is currently collaborating with 30,000 researchers, academic institutions and commercial companies across 90 countries to help them accelerate their studies. The platform has supported more than 4,000 studies that cover a broad range of disease areas including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, heart disease, rare diseases, and cancer. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and decentralized trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 100,000,000 data points and 1,000,000 enrolled patients. As one of the first companies to leverage machine readable data for clinical research, Castor’s platform will enable AI-driven clinical trials and provide invaluable insights to commercial research.
In 2018 Castor raised $6.25m in funding from healthcare investor INKEF Capital in the Netherlands.
De Nederlandse health-tech startup Castor EDC, een electronic data capture-platform voor medisch onderzoek, heeft een Europese aanbesteding gewonnen bij het Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC). Met het platform van Castor EDC kunnen de onderzoekers van het LUMC in een paar stappen een klinische dataverzameling voor onderzoek opstellen en
uitvoeren.
Eenvoudig onderzoeksdata verzamelen en delen
Met Castor EDC kunnen onderzoekers eenvoudig onderzoeksdata verzamelen, standaardiseren en delen. Alle klinisch onderzoekers in het LUMC krijgen hiermee toegang tot het Castor EDC-platform. Het platform maakt tevens een koppeling met het Medical Intelligence platform dat door het LUMC is opgezet, waarbij data uit onder andere het EPD (HiX van Chipsoft) gebruikt kunnen worden voor klinisch wetenschappelijk onderzoek.
HL7 FHIR en analyse-omgeving
Dankzij een koppeling van Castor EDC kunnen gepseudonimiseerde patiëntgegevens via een veilige, versleutelde verbinding, conform de HL7 FHIR-standaard, beschikbaar worden gesteld in het onderzoeksplatform ten bate van klinisch onderzoek. Hiermee besparen de onderzoekers veel tijd, omdat gegevens uit patiëntendossiers niet meer handmatig hoeven worden overgenomen.
Zonder uitleg aan de slag
De implementatie van Castor EDC in het LUMC wordt uitgevoerd in samenwerking met Beter Healthcare, Furore en Firely. “Met ons datamanagementsysteem kunnen de onderzoekers van het LUMC zeer laagdrempelig, veilig en vele malen sneller dan voorheen klinisch onderzoek uitvoeren,” aldus Derk Arts, oprichter en CEO van Castor EDC. “In principe kunnen de onderzoekers van het LUMC binnen enkele uren en zonder nadere uitleg een studie bouwen in hun Castor-omgeving, maar toch kiezen wij ervoor om zeven trainingen te beleggen. ”
Over Castor EDC
Castor EDC heeft één doel voor ogen: medisch onderzoek slimmer en efficiënter maken met gebruiksvriendelijke technologie. Met 30 mannen en vrouwen wordt elke dag gewerkt aan software tools die het voor onderzoekers en patiënten wereldwijd mogelijk maakt meer te halen uit alle tijd en geld die in medisch onderzoek wordt gestoken. Opgericht in 2012, telt Castor EDC intussen 2.800 onderzoeken, 23.000 gebruikers en 80 instellingen zoals het AMC, Radboudumc en King’s College Hospital in Londen (VK) onder zijn afnemers.
Over de oprichter, Derk Arts
Oprichter en CEO is de Derk Arts (MD, PhD, 32 jaar). Hij richtte het bedrijf op tijdens zijn PhD in het
AMC in Amsterdam. Vorig jaar heeft het bedrijf 1,1 miljoen euro subsidie ontvangen vanuit Horizon
2020, het innovatieprogramma van de Europese Commissie voor MKB-bedrijven.
Castor EDC, one of the fastest growing Dutch health-tech startups, accelerating the medical research process with user-friendly technology, today announced that it raised $6.25 million (€5.3M). This seed funding round was led by INKEF Capital, an Amsterdam based technology, and healthcare venture capital firm, with several angel investors. “Medical data has become the world’s most valuable asset, yet it wastes away in modern-day research,” Derk Arts, Castor’s founder and CEO, states. “At Castor, we have built a cutting-edge, user-friendly Electronic Data Capture [EDC] platform that we are putting in the hands of every medical researcher worldwide. With the help of our system, we allow researchers to streamline the clinical trial process and use their data to its full potential.” The platform enables researchers to set up data capture forms, collaborate with colleagues, invite patients through questionnaires, import, export and analyze their data in a secure, compliant cloud environment, all without elaborate training or technical skills. By helping standardize their data using machine learning, researchers will be able to create the most extensive, most diverse, distributed medical research dataset the world has ever seen. “This would allow the medical community to discover potential cures for diseases much faster,” Arts said. The funding, which comes on the back of Castor closing its third major deal with a large academic hospital, will be used to expand in the US, and to continue development of its research platform. Arts: “We will focus on developing our technology to have the biggest impact on medical research: fully mobile workflows, increasing the number of integrations with Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and putting the patient in the driver’s seat by further integrating our patient-facing dynamic consent module, called MyConsent. It will be instrumental in fixing one of the largest problems in medical research: patient recruitment.” Corné Jansen (director INKEF Capital) says: “When we met the Castor team we were immediately excited by the depth of their vision and impressed with how far they brought the company without external investments. With Castor sitting at the intersection of our Technology & Healthcare investment areas, we can leverage our understanding of the healthcare industry with our SaaS experience.” Arts, who holds a medical degree and Ph.D., left his medical career to start the company in 2012, which managed to secure a €1.1M Horizon 2020 grant from the European Commission in May last year. This grant is being used to build machine learning capabilities into the platform, enabling its users to develop standardized forms and questionnaires quickly. About Castor EDC Founded in 2012, Castor is an electronic data capture system for medical research, growing more than 100% per year. Headquartered in Amsterdam and with an office opening in Boston (US), Castor currently employs a team of 30 people. The platform hosts well over 3,000 studies and has more than 18,000 users, who hail from over 100 renowned institutes like the Academic Medical Center (Amsterdam), Radboudumc (Nijmegen), UKE (Hamburg), and King’s College Hospital (London).
Platform to facilitate rapid deployment of trials to test vaccines and treatments
Hoboken, New Jersey: April 2, 2020: 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 100 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 100 COVID-19 studies across 10 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:
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 byregistering here, and to visit theironline academy to become familiar with the platform. The WHO-defined CRFs can be downloadedhere.
Amsterdam, Netherlands and Hoboken, New Jersey: February 17, 2020: Castor, a health-tech company that enables medical researchers to capture standardized data to support data driven medical decision making, announced that it will provide free access to its data capture system to all COVID-19 research projects.
On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new airborne contagious coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 a.k.a 2019-nCoV), that causes the disease dubbed COVID-19, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The WHO is providing technical guidanceon how to conduct useful early investigations and has highlighted the need to assemble large amounts of accurate and usable data as quickly as possible.
Castor has developed and made available ready-for-use electronic Case Report Forms (eCRFs) based on the WHO standard CRFs, to help researchers start their study or registry in less than an hour, ensuring they capture high quality data to help drive the global research effort.
By ensuring researchers capture standardized data on Castor’s clinical data platform, clinical data from around the world can be easily aggregated. This approach can accelerate the work of researchers who are trying to understand the virus and disease.
Commenting on the initiative, Castor’s CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD, said: “When novel strains of viruses like the Coronavirus emerge, data quickly becomes our most valuable asset. On behalf of the team, I am proud to announce that Castor is joining the fight against COVID-19 by making our data capture platform available for free for all COVID-19 research projects.
“A standardized approach in collecting clinical data is critical in order to better understand the natural history of disease and describe clinical phenotypes and treatment interventions (i.e. clinical characterization). For a global data collection effort to be truly successful, we need to go beyond standardized forms. The threshold for capturing these datasets should be as low as possible, to ensure anyone is willing and able to contribute valuable data.”
Castor encourages all COVID-19 researchers in need of standardized, high quality data to submit for a free billing code via [email protected], 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.
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 and wearables. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and decentralized trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 130,000,000 data points and 1,400,000 enrolled patients.
Media & IR Enquiries Optimum Strategic Communications Mary Clark/ Hollie Vile/Manel Mateus [email protected]
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 37,000 researchers across 90 countries are using Castor to supercharge their research. Castor’s platform has supported more than 4,000 commercial and academic studies that cover a broad range of disease areas including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, rare diseases, and oncology. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and decentralized trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 130,000,000 data points and 1,400,000 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.
