HOBOKEN, NJ, UNITED STATES, April 28, 2021: Castor announces continued support to the WHO by powering the world’s largest adaptive COVID-19 trial: Solidarity.
Solidarity is an international clinical trial to help find an effective treatment among existing medications for COVID-19, launched by the World Health Organization and partners. It is one of the largest international randomized trials for COVID-19 treatments, having currently enrolled over 13,000 patients in 500 hospital sites in over 30 countries.
The Solidarity trial is evaluating the efficacy of drugs on three important outcomes in COVID-19 patients: mortality, need for assisted ventilation, and duration of hospital stay. Solidarity compares investigatory treatment options against standard-of-care to assess their effect on these three outcomes. Other drugs have been added to the trial continually, based on emerging evidence.
Castor is powering the WHO Solidarity trial with its remote and decentralized clinical research platform, along with 24/7 clinical support services. Castor rapidly deployed a clinical trial platform that successfully managed the complexities of a study conducted in over 30 countries, including offline capability for regions with poor internet connectivity.
The cornerstone of the Solidarity trial is its adaptive design born from necessity, as medication availability will vary by location, and as the WHO’s NEJM publication reported, additional therapies including monoclonal antibodies may be added.
According to the published paper, “The protocol was designed to involve hundreds of potentially over-stressed hospitals in dozens of countries,” making rapid and user-friendly data capture essential. “Online randomization and consent of patients [via Castor’s platform] took just a few minutes, as did online reporting of death in hospital or discharge alive.”
Spearheading the partnership for Castor, CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD, said, “In the continued race against time to research effective COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, this trial has already enabled the world to reduce the number of patients admitted to ICUs and death from this disease.”
Arts continued, “At Castor, we strive to democratize clinical research through innovative clinical trial technologies, and ultimately create a future in which we maximize the impact of trials through increased patient access and diversity. Castor is proud to support the WHO in their critical efforts against COVID-19.”
About Castor
Castor is democratizing clinical trials with the highest rated eClinical platform for decentralized and hybrid clinical trials. Castor’s plug and play platform offers rapid deployment at scale, enabling researchers to create a trial in a matter of clicks, with easy enrollment and real-world data capture. Castor is bringing human-centered design to the clinical trial process, from recruitment to analysis, and improving the quality, security and reusability of data for researchers worldwide.
More than 75,000 researchers across 90 countries are using Castor to supercharge their clinical studies, enrolling more than 2.6 million patients. Castor’s platform has supported more than 7,500 studies around the world covering a broad range of disease areas including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, rare diseases, medical device and medical diagnostics. For more information, visit castoredc2.staging.wpengine.com
Doug Weatherhead
Castor
[email protected]
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