CNS and neurology trials depend on precise, validated endpoint capture and patient compliance over long study durations. Castor delivers both in a unified platform, with a consumer-grade patient app and no integration overhead between EDC and eCOA.
CNS trials rely on validated cognitive and functional assessment scales that must be administered in their validated form, in the validated sequence, with no modification. Any deviation risks data integrity and regulatory scrutiny. Most EDC platforms require custom builds for each instrument. Castor delivers 190+ validated instruments out of the box. Castor scopes each study build with managed Professional Services. Low-to-medium complexity studies typically move from kickoff (KOM) to user acceptance testing (UAT) in 4 to 8 weeks, high-complexity studies in 8 to 12 weeks.
Patients in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and MS trials may have cognitive or physical limitations that make standard ePRO apps difficult to use. Castor Connect is designed to sustain compliance in cognitively demanding CNS protocols, with a consumer-grade patient app, offline mode, SMS and WhatsApp reminders, and 24/7 multilingual patient support. Structured electronic capture also reduces the data-side variability that contributes to rater drift.
CNS protocols often require multiple assessments per visit, which adds operational overhead for sites and raises the risk of rater drift over long studies. Castor does not provide rater certification or rater training services. What Castor contributes is consistent, structured data capture and event-driven dynamic scheduling that surface the right assessment, in the right form, at the right visit, helping reduce the data-side variability that contributes to rater drift. Reducing that burden through intuitive platform design directly improves data quality.
Neurological disease trials often run for 18 months to several years. Keeping patients and caregivers engaged with an ePRO platform for that duration requires consumer-grade design, not clinical-portal design.
Neurology and CNS research places uniquely high demands on both the platform and the patient. Cognitive and functional assessment scales must be administered precisely, at exactly the right intervals, in validated formats, and the patients completing them may have the very cognitive or motor impairments that the trial is studying.
From cognitive assessment deployment to LAR eConsent and caregiver workflows, Castor is built for the operational realities that make CNS trials hard.
Castor Connect is designed to sustain compliance in cognitively demanding CNS protocols, with offline mode, SMS and WhatsApp reminders, and 24/7 multilingual patient support in 15 to 20 languages, maximizing accessibility for patients with cognitive or motor limitations. Structured electronic capture also reduces the data-side variability that contributes to rater drift.
Castor comes pre-configured with 190+ validated instruments out of the box, including EORTC, FACT, EQ-5D, SF-36, and PROMIS, with no custom instrument build required and no 12 to 16 week legacy eCOA instrument-build cycle. CNS-specific cognitive and functional assessment scales are supported within the platform’s instrument library, including MMSE, ADAS-Cog, MADRS, CGI, and UPDRS. Castor scopes each study build with managed Professional Services. Low-to-medium complexity studies typically move from kickoff (KOM) to user acceptance testing (UAT) in 4 to 8 weeks, high-complexity studies in 8 to 12 weeks.
Cognitive assessments, rater-administered scales, and patient-reported outcomes all live in the same Castor database as the clinical EDC data. No data transfer step, no reconciliation process, no second validation package. The neurologist’s rater score and the patient’s ePRO entry appear in the same record, in real time.
Many CNS trials require caregiver-rated or Observer-Reported Outcomes (ObsRO) alongside patient self-report. Castor’s survey engine and Automation Engine handle proxy respondents natively. A caregiver’s email address can be associated directly with the participant record, and specific survey packages are routed automatically to the caregiver rather than the patient, without manual workarounds or separate vendor involvement. All data flows to the same study database with no transfer or reconciliation step.
CNS studies, particularly in Alzheimer’s and dementia, frequently involve patients with fluctuating cognitive capacity and requirements for legally authorised representative consent. Castor’s eConsent natively supports LAR workflows: dedicated LAR signature blocks on the ICF, automated tracking of the full LAR audit trail (LAR invited, accepted or denied, signed), re-consent procedures triggered automatically on protocol amendments, and guardian consent flows for paediatric CNS populations. All consent events are time-stamped and immutable in the audit trail, meeting FDA and EMA documentation standards. No separate consent vendor required.
CNS and neurology trials are increasingly global. The Castor platform is available in 15 to 20 languages, with 24/7 multilingual patient support, a single platform instance managing all markets, and no per-country software builds required. For trials running in China, Castor also supports native WeChat eCOA, so participants complete assessments in an app they already use every day. Full regulatory compliance built in: FDA 21 CFR Part 11, ICH E6(R2/R3), EU Annex 11, GDPR, and HIPAA across all study types and jurisdictions.
CNS and Neurology clinical trials supported on Castor, including a leading European research hospital running a 14,000+ patient stroke registry, plus studies in Parkinson’s, MS, epilepsy, and psychiatric indications across 160+ countries.
Source: Castor platform data, verified 2026
Click Therapeutics runs digital therapeutics trials across CNS and mental health indications including depression, schizophrenia, and migraine, where keeping participants engaged is the difference between usable and unusable endpoint data. Using Castor eConsent and EDC, the team sustained patient compliance and high engagement while capturing every assessment securely in one validated record, a direct proof point for the patient-compliance and unified data capture that high-frequency CNS ePRO programmes depend on.
The Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies (IACS) runs neuro and mental health research on Castor EDC, ePRO, and eConsent. The team cut study build time by 63%, building 2.7x faster than its previous approach, evidence of how a unified platform removes the instrument-build delays that slow CNS study startup.
Recognized as a Major Contender in Everest Group’s Life Sciences eCOA Products PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2025.
Rated strongly for customer loyalty in ISR’s 2025 eCOA/ePRO Benchmarking.
Castor is a unified clinical trial platform that captures validated cognitive assessments and patient-reported outcomes in one place, so CNS and neurology teams do not have to run a separate eCOA vendor alongside their EDC. Rater-administered scales, patient self-report, caregiver-reported outcomes, and observer ratings all flow into the same study database in real time, with no data transfer step and no reconciliation between platforms. For CNS populations with fluctuating cognitive capacity, eConsent and Legally Authorized Representative workflows run inside the same platform.
Validated CNS scales such as MMSE, ADAS-Cog, MADRS, CGI, and UPDRS are captured in the same platform that holds the clinical EDC data, removing the integration overhead between EDC and eCOA.
Clinician-administered (ClinRO), patient-reported (PRO), caregiver-reported (CaO), and observer ratings sit in the same study record, giving sites and sponsors a single view of every endpoint.
Dedicated LAR signature blocks, automated audit-trail tracking, and re-consent on protocol amendments support the consent workflows that CNS and dementia studies require, all within the same platform.
Yes. Castor comes pre-configured with 190+ validated instruments out of the box, including EORTC, FACT, EQ-5D, SF-36, and PROMIS, with no custom instrument build required and no 12 to 16 week legacy eCOA instrument-build cycle. CNS-specific cognitive and functional assessment scales are supported within the platform’s instrument library, including MMSE, ADAS-Cog, MADRS, CGI, and UPDRS. Castor scopes each study build with managed Professional Services. Low-to-medium complexity studies typically move from kickoff (KOM) to user acceptance testing (UAT) in 4 to 8 weeks, high-complexity studies in 8 to 12 weeks.
Castor Connect, our consumer-grade patient app, is designed to sustain compliance in cognitively demanding CNS protocols. It supports offline mode, SMS and WhatsApp reminders, and 24/7 multilingual patient support in 15 to 20 languages, maximizing accessibility for patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or MS who may face cognitive or motor barriers.
Castor supports the cognitive and functional assessment scales most CNS and neurology trials rely on, including MMSE, ADAS-Cog, MADRS, CGI, and UPDRS, alongside the general 190+ validated instrument library that ships with EORTC, FACT, EQ-5D, SF-36, and PROMIS. Each instrument is captured in its validated form, in the validated sequence, within the same platform that holds the clinical EDC data, so there is no custom instrument build and no separate eCOA validation package.
Castor’s eConsent natively supports the consent workflows that CNS and dementia studies require. For patients with fluctuating capacity, Castor provides dedicated Legally Authorized Representative (LAR) signature blocks on the ICF, automated audit trail tracking of every LAR action (invited, accepted, denied, signed), re-consent procedures triggered automatically on protocol amendments, and guardian consent flows for paediatric participants. All consent events are time-stamped and immutable in the audit trail, meeting FDA and EMA documentation standards, and all of it runs within the same platform as the EDC and ePRO.
Neurological disease trials often run for 18 months to several years, so retention depends on consumer-grade design rather than clinical-portal design. Castor Connect keeps patients and caregivers engaged with offline mode, SMS and WhatsApp reminders, and 24/7 multilingual support. On the data side, event-driven dynamic scheduling surfaces the right assessment, in the right form, at the right visit, which helps reduce the data-side variability that contributes to rater drift across long studies. Castor does not provide rater certification or rater training services.
Yes. Castor’s unified platform supports clinician-administered assessments (ClinRO), patient-reported outcomes (PRO), caregiver-reported outcomes (CaO), and observer ratings within the same study record, with no data transfer step and no reconciliation between separate vendor platforms. All data flows to the same database in real time, giving sites and sponsors a single, unified view of every endpoint from day one.